


Cobbled

by TheCobbledWriter



Category: Emmy The Robot (Webcomic)
Genre: Action, Drama, F/M, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 43,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCobbledWriter/pseuds/TheCobbledWriter
Summary: Davidson Randolph is now a nandroid retrieval specialist. He finds 'em, he fixes 'em, he scraps 'em and he sells 'em.Case three-five-seven should have been like any other, just a nandroid found by the dumpster. It wasn't.What he calls a life gets a little more tired.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Pick Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A late night pick up at the number one burger franchise in the city.

The night was exceptionally dark in what was already an exceptional day for her. Many of the streets lamps were burnt out, if not laying across the street or missing altogether. Cracked roadways, trash piles aplenty, and broken windows signified her presence in the poorer areas of the city. This section was unfamiliar to her. It didn’t exist in any of her maps.

The rainfall had produced a new sensation as it fell onto her shell, each drop eventually seeping into the newly formed cracks and giving a burning sensation. Her joints would suddenly spasm in pain, shooting sparks and emitting smoke before resting again. She had the horrific feeling of restlessness as each system sorted out in turn and she couldn’t “feel” its presence anymore. A million lights that formed her consciousnesses were slowly dying out as the darkness encroached her. She was going to fall into a void where only her mind was left. Then, there would be nothing...

“Is this what it feels like to die?” she processed to herself, a bizarre oddity for one such as her to even consider the question. Can an entity that is not even alive ask this? Alas, she could not move, could not escape to shelter, couldn’t run from her eventual fate. She was going to burn to death in an ocean of rain. But in a way… maybe this was for the best. She had failed whom she was meant to treasure the most of all.

She lowered her head in shame and closed her remaining eye. She had no choice. She would obey her master’s final will that she remain here, resting against a trash can behind the Burgers-in-Space restaurant and succumbing to non-existence. Perhaps now her master will find joy in her, will finally make that smile she always knew he was capable of making. Maybe now he will be happy…as the darkness began to snuff out what few remaining lights she had within her. She started to drift in the void and feel her processes shut down. Little by little her consciousness began to retreat inward until all she could sense were the fire crackers falling from the sky...

“This her?” she had suddenly heard, her eye snapping around to locate the source of the noise.

“Yeah man, this her,” said another, two men, one in his teens, the other in his...early thirties? Late Twenties? She couldn’t pin it down. The two had emerged from the darkness and stood above the damaged shell, her systems still occasionally emitting sparks and seizing up.

“Yeah, that’s a busted one alright,” the older gentlemen said, kneeling down and peering over her body, studying every detail. He was Caucasian, slightly overweight with blonde hair that nearly reached his shoulders. He was wearing a brown and blue flannel shirt with all the buttons opened and a black shirt underneath. He leaned in and grabbed the optical hanging from its socket. She could see a black hat with bold CSU letters and blue jeans. The other was just wearing all black and an apron, a giant burger flying around the earth adorned it.

“So eh, this ain’t gonna cost nothing right? Cuz the boss is gonna get mad if it will,” the younger one said, looking back at the restaurant and keeping his distance from the two of us.

“I was told this wasn’t his, is that incorrect?” said the older man.

“Nah of course not, we just found it like this, heard you’re the guy to call for stuff like this since the trash people can’t take it.” The older man attempted to reinsert the optical back to no avail as it popped back out again.

“Then no, I don’t charge for retrieval of someone else’s droid when it’s been discarded,” he said, standing back up and taking some money from his wallet before handing it to the younger gentlemen. “But you can get me a number four with no tomatoes and a Dr. Jig please.”

“Uh... sure. You need anything else?” he asked while turning to leave.

“Just my order,” the older man replied, walking with the other person. The two went in separate directions with the older one making his way back to a muddy red truck. She noticed a logo on the door of the vehicle and struggled to read the bold lettering covering it. She had seen a series of letters that spelled an acronym, “N.R.A.I”. He had retrieved something from the back of it, a large black rectangle that was being carried like a suitcase. It was only when he had placed it back down in front of her that she could see how the top was green glass and the insides were essentially curved like a tube. The man had pushed a button on the side of this device and the top had slid open, indicating that it was something of a pod. He gently wrapped his arms around the damaged robot and carefully placed her inside the box. While her sensors were damaged, she could feel something from his touch that for the longest time she forgot existed, her sensors, her body, her processes, they had all began to calm. The darkness slowed it’s warpath through her and she felt a sense of relief as she was placed inside the tube, the glass doors closing and shielding her from the rain, the pain finally stopping. But this calm was tempered with confusion as she considered the will of her master against this stranger. 

“But, this is what the master wanted wasn’t it?” she queried within herself. She had no power to object to being taken from her tomb and she felt unease about being forced to disobey. She knew that master’s word was everything. Now someone she had never met before was interfering with that. How could he do that? She was placed into the back of the truck with many tools and boxes surrounding her. She looked up and saw the odd man taking a plastic cup and paper bag from the boy. The two were happily chatting as she gazed at him with curiosity. The two eventually parted ways, the man entered his truck and started it, leaving the girl in the back to contemplate the sudden change in events that left her dumbstruck. She did not have long to process it all however. With each passing street lamp, broken or not, her internal battery eventually drained itself until she was forced to shutdown. Her darkness finally enveloping her completely. Only now, the void of guarantees had given way to an uncertain future. To the girl’s positronic mind, that was a worse fate than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	2. Assess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Performing an initial assessment is easy. It's what you discover that makes it hard.

The man’s drive back to his home had the fortunate luck of only passing by two car accidents and not the usual three. The rain had begun to clear and midnight was approaching. Within the confines of a neighborhood with too many car thefts and break-ins, his red muddy truck had pulled into a cul-de-sac on the far side of town. A ranch style house with a rather large garage that seemed to “attach” itself to the rest of the building awaited him. The truck entered the drive-way and he proceeded to hoist the device carrying the nandroid out from the back. He opened the front door in one casual motion, one could see a small kitchen to his immediate left, a front room with a couch and TV to his immediate right. As he flicked a switch by his door, the set of lights above him illuminated all three spaces as they slowly faded on. One could see, beyond the front room, that the wall to his garage was missing. His garage stored tools and equipment as all garages do, but his went far beyond a simple drill and screwdriver. There was a vast series of wires pouring from the ceiling, connecting to bizarre devices, computers, tools, and what seemed to be an operating table. A series of wall mounts along the back wall had nandroids stored in pods, each one in standby mode. Next to the table was a chair and a desk that had various tools in its shelves. The main computer driving this system rested on top of it.

He placed the containment device by the table and turned on the computer. Taking a seat in the kitchen, he ate his recently purchased meal as he watched the system spring to life, various gizmos shifted and moved. A reassuring series of noises emanated and echoed throughout his house as he was fascinated by the process every time he did it. After a minute or two the system finished booting. His computer had sounded a dainty chime to indicate as such. With the equipment ready, his meal consumed, and his hands washed of dirt and grease, he opened the device and retrieved the nandroid from within. He placed her on the table and adjusted an overhead light to illuminate his latest case. Opening a panel on the back of her neck and plugging two cords from the computer inside of it, he was relieved when he saw she could still make a connection to it. The man took a seat in his chair and turned to face the computer. Bathed in a green glow from the monitor, he began typing away commands and initiated a diagnoses scan to run on the machine. He grabbed a nearby microphone and set it on the desk, the words “NOW RECORDING LOG 1 of CASE 0x165” visible on the monitor.

“Initial assessment of nandroid case three-five-seven, log the first, beginning,” the man had said, putting on a pair of safety goggles and rubber gloves as he began to inspect her. “The subject is a typical model two from Sterling Robotics, found behind a Burgers-in-Space restaurant on the corner of Fillmore street and Golden Gate avenue, wearing the official maid uniform. Subject is of standard shape and standard size, no additional modifications are currently present on the outer shell. Model currently sports two blue optics, left optical is loose and right optical is outside of it’s socket but still connected, will most likely need replacing. Model wears black long haired wig that extends to about… couple inches past the shoulders? Face is heavily scuffed with dirt and scratch marks, a crack is visible from the top of the head, down to the right optical with another crack from her right cheek vent to the bottom of the right optical.” The man lifted the nandroid's dress and scanned the interior of her body. “More dents and scuff marks are across her body, particularly the right torso and lower left thigh. The right arm suffers heavy denting in the upper arm region. Left arm seems to have been pulled, will need to reset and pop it back into place.” He continued to investigate the nandroid’s arm by attempting to twist and turn them at various degrees and seeing how well they moved. “Right arm joints are done and will require replacing, left arm joints may also need replacing or a simple repair may suffice.” He proceeded to lift the nandroid’s legs and did much of the same, recording how the leg joints were smashed in and heavily dented. As he put them down, he noticed the skirt was damaged as well. “Uniform has a rather large hole in its side… tailor should be able to patch it.”

“Hmm?” The man wondered, noticing something with the nandroid’s hand he didn’t before. “The left hand is missing its wedding finger but...this doesn’t seem to have been broken off, the finger forms a perfect circle around the severed piece.” The man removed the nandroid’s cap and unhooked the wig from the center of the head, exposing a panel he carefully removed with his nearby tools and seeing a glowing cube pulsing with an icy blue light, connected on all sides by wires. “The positronic brain is unharmed despite the surrounding damage to the model’s head,” he noted, placing the panel back into its place. He took off the nandroid’s dress so he could remove the torso panel and see the inner components. A mess of wires and chips couldn’t hide a bright yellow sphere located directly in the nandroid’s stomach area, not a single crack or dent to be found in it. “The chips and wiring have burnt out from the rain, mostly the cheap stuff. The main core is left untouched however even though the outside shell has suffered extensive damage, hmm.” He replaced all the panels and placed the wig, dress, and cap on the desk by the computer. He studied the computer as it finished its tests on the nandroid’s brain and as he began to read the results, he was rather intrigued. He began to ponder to himself, “Her emotional states in these logs are odd, this shouldn’t be possible right?” he looked over the nandroid again and began to piece some uncomfortable pieces together.

“Based on how no damage has occurred to critical systems and is mostly concentrated to the outside shell in addition to the severed finger and deliberate destruction of the leg servos…” he paused, not wanting to consider the possibility, yet realized it was one with a high plausibility. “I suspect that the damage inflicted on this nandroid was...intentional. Rather than for the purpose of explicit destruction as seen with case two-two-four and three-one-six, the damage seen here would cause physical discomfort and pain but leave critical systems unharmed causing the nandroid to maintain high cognitive processing. Leg damage also seems to be inflicted with the purpose of removing nandroid mobility.” He had to stop and reaffirm his purpose in doing this. He had to determine if it was worth fixing or not, nothing more. “Well...regardless, final assessment given is~~~…” he began to look at the broken and dented robot, taking his glasses off and rubbing is increasingly tired eyes. The repairs would be difficult given how numerous they were and normally he wouldn’t consider it. In most cases, a critical system would be damaged as well, flunking them entirely. But they weren’t... A sense of pity washed over him as he looked down at the raggedy machine. His own mind began to logic his feelings away and he spoke once more. “My skills in repairing these things has seen improvement… but it is still lacking, particularly with optical repairs and wiring. This may be the challenge I need to improve them further.” Not wanting to get caught in a cycle of reasoning again, he unplugged the robot and made his final remarks. “The subject is ranked as a Class B, repairs will begin immediately. Ending log.” He prepped the operating table and wanted to finish the repairs before sunrise. But, as his fingers brushed against the first tool, his attention was suddenly yanked from him by the ringing phone next to his kitchen window...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	3. Off On The Right Foot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sudden call to a crappy site leaves Davidson with opportunity.

Two calls in one night was not unheard of, but being interrupted on the cusp of doing repairs was annoying all the same. Regardless, money calls and he follows. He was far more intrigued when he made the final turn and saw where his latest client had sent him, a waste plant. One could say this man was many things, stupid being one of them, but even he could notice that this could be suspect. Being on the outer edge of the city didn’t help his suspicions.

“The fuck is this shit,” he muttered to himself, “Should I even be here?” He thought about just turning around and leaving. His client neglected to inform him he would be digging through garbage. Perhaps he assumed his pleads would be ignored otherwise. “Two calls in one night, with this guy paying up front for the retrieval of his own nandroid. Damn… I can’t ignore that.” He cursed himself under his breath and pulled forward to the front gate of the plant. He took a puff from his cigarette and grabbed his sawed-off in the passenger seat. The first sign of trouble and he was gone, though he realized that no one, not even Mr. Sterling, would want him bumped off. As he approached the premise, a nervous looking man in a suit and tie saw his truck and waved at him as he stood in front of his car. He was alone, and he looked like a scrawny one to be sure. He began to waltz up to the truck after scanning his surroundings and reached out a hand to greet the gentlemen. Davidson moved the shotgun underneath the dashboard, he was ready to grab it at a moment’s notice.

“You uh... are you Mr. Randolph? Davidson Randolph? I spoke to you on the phone earlier?” Davidson looked around as well and didn’t get the impression he was being set up. He proceeded to turn the truck off and exit it. He easily noticed he was four inches taller than his client as he shook his hand and flicked the cigarette he had been smoking.

“That would make you Mr. O’Hara, correct?” Davidson replied, noticing the man’s friendly demeanor and loosening his guard a little, but ready to draw the knife in his back pocket should he need to.

“So what seems to be the trouble Mr. O’Hara, you mentioned on the phone about a retrieval but I don’t usually have business discussions at trash heaps on the edge of town. Gotta be honest, I almost bugged out on you.”

The older gentlemen began to laugh and pat Davidson on the back, bemusing him with his reaction, perhaps he should have left him behind. “Ah my boy I do apologize for what must seem to be an odd string of events. You see, it’s the wife.”

“Of course,” Davidson interjected, adjusting his glasses and observing the massive building near the landfill, tall stacks erupting from the center. “With men of your age that seems to be the only problem there is.”

“Well, the wife and kid. Beautiful and spoiled rotten I tell ya.”

“If you whip out the wallet I really am taking off.” Davidson said with a deadpan face.

“No, no, not tonight,” the man took his wallet out anyway and showed a picture of a child in Christmas pajamas being hugged by a red haired nandroid. 

“Cute, you mind tellin’ me her registered name? I might need it.”

“It’s uh, it’s Wendy I think.” The man returned the picture into his wallet and stood straight as a nail as he prepared what Davidson knew was gonna be his sob story. “Now the wife and I had a little disagreement and up the nandroid goes into the trash. I’m tryin’ to calm her down when the truck comes and picks it up, the kid sees this and comes runnin’ with tears aplenty and arms a wavin’. Wife storms off and I don’t know what to do.”

“Heh, classic case eh? She thinks you’re cheating on her with the thing?” Davidson said while chuckling to himself at the man’s spat.

“Now do I look like a pervert to you sir? Never done that and I reckon all civilized people don’t as well. No, she just got mad and shut her down, yellin’ about it takin’ over or somethin’.”

“Well,” Davidson said, thinking on his client’s situation and considering his options, “I don’t think you can call the trash people seeing as dumping nandroids in the trash is technically illegal and they’ll fine you for not properly disposing it.”

“Well that’s the thing, I thought people did that all the time,” the man retorted.

“Of course, and the trash people just take them to Sterling anyway cause they don’t care about giving fines to every person who does it. But those people aren’t stupid enough to call them and ask for the damn thing back. They’ll fine you for wasting their time.” Davidson turned away from the building and began walking towards the landfill. “I think the landfill is owned by the city and I doubt they care much if I go in there and get her back. You got any idea where they might have dumped her?”

“They uh...they didn’t dump her in there,” the gentlemen explained.

Davidson stopped and turned to look at O’Hara, processing what he said several times in confusion and tiled his head. “What?” he responded.

“I came here to try to get her back and I saw the truck dump her in the building right before everyone clocked out for the night. I was panicking all evening at the diner up the road before I remembered your ad in the paper.”

“Okay,” Davidson responded, “So who gave you access to allow me in the building to search for her? You bribe someone?”

“Bribe? You’re an agent right? I thought you could just go in there and get her back, maybe flash a badge or something.”

Davidson nodded his head in disbelief, another old fart who didn’t pay attention to clearly worded ads in the classifieds. But if he played this hand well, he could sweeten the pot. “First of all, you clearly missed the part of the ad that stated I have no jurisdiction anywhere and that I am in no way affiliated with the feds, Sterling Robotics, or the cops. Second, I am not an agent but a retrieval specialist.”

“Meaning? What?” The old man had his arms open and was taken aback. “You can’t help?”

“Meaning, if I go in there and get your shit back I’ll be trespassing and breaking the law, I have no power to just waltz in there and look for your nandroid.” Davidson explained, walking away and heading back to his truck. He ensured he was moving just fast enough for the old man to barely catch him as he reached for the door handle. O’Hara grabbed Davidson and turned him around with his hands on his shoulders.

“Now buddy listen I need this from ya! I can’t afford another one and the kid won’t stop screaming and crying. They won’t go to sleep without her! I need your help on this one!”

“That ain’t my damn problem,” Davidson said while removing the man’s hand and taking a step back. “Get a belt or something, I’m sure you can figure out another way.”

“Please man I’m beggin’ ya! I’ll do anything!” Davidson looked at this man and he seemed to be at the end of his rope. The knot was pulled just enough for Davidson to help.

“Alright old timer,” Davidson said with a smile, patting the man on the shoulder to reassure him, “You pay me an additional ten percent of the base price, keep that mouth of yours shut, and I think we can work something out.”

“Ten!?” the man exclaimed “She ain’t worth that much buddy, five percent!”

“Oh you got balls now eh? If you had those before you wouldn’t be here beggin’ a stranger to fix your marital problems. Nine percent if I’m breaking the law for you.”

“You youngins break the law everyday, don’t take no high ground with me, six percent.”

Davidson shot back at the man with a stern look and quick voice, “Eight,” he said, using his stature to intimidate him.

“Six, and that’s it, I’m a salary man who could barely afford it in the first place.”

“Seven, final offer, you’re paying for me to get these cleaned after wading through trash.” O’Hara and Davidson were now at a stare down as Davidson towered over O’Hara, not giving him a solitary sign of backing down. After half a minute of silence, O’Hara reclined from Davidson and put on a genuine smile.

“You’d make a mean seller you son of a bitch! It’s a deal!” Davidson was slightly weirded out by O’Hara’s sudden friendliness.

“Uh, Great? Just make sure you got the cash, cause if you don’t I’m taking it with me. Where did you see them dump her off?” 

“There,” the man replied, pointing towards one of the loading doors marked with the sign 'LOADING DOCK A-C'. Davidson returned to his truck and took out a bandanna along with another strange device, a long series of flat rectangles the size of his hand connected by tiny rods forming a chain, a handle at the bottom of it sporting several buttons and switches. O’Hara looked interested in it and began to press down on the last rectangle in the chain.

“Huh, totally stiff, doesn’t move at all, what’s the use of this? You gonna smash her with it?” Davidson outstretched his arm and swung the device down hitting the flat side of the chain. O’Hara was spooked when the chain quickly snapped itself around Davidson’s arm.  
“Cool huh? Sterling makes them. It allows me to wrangle and deliver shocks to nandroids once it wraps around them.” He explained while pushing a button and pulling the chain off of his arm as it resumed its elongated form. The two returned to the gate in front of the building, Davidson making the chain roll itself back up so he can clip the device to his belt.

The man looked at Davidson with his eyes half shut and confused. “Why would someone like you need something like that? They don’t hurt people.”

Davidson pulled one of his sleeves up and showed a scar traveling along his arm. “I use to think that too. You ever hear about outmodes?” Davidson tied the blue bandanna over his face and climbed the gate protecting the plant.

“This is a model two nandroid though.” The man observed Davidson ignore his rebuttal and quietly began walking up to the building and looking around. O’Hara returned to his car to escape the cold and turned it on, preparing to leave at a moments notice should Davidson attract undue attention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	4. Recover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A human will wade through anything to get the reward at the bottom.

Davidson may have acted aloof, but he knew full well he had done this before. His business was lively, but not nearly enough to sustain his tools and computer systems if he only stuck to upright requests. Truth is, while a fair amount of his calls were perfectly legal, a fair amount of them were not. Stealing nandroids from ex-partners, breaking into places after dark to find outmodes in hiding, infiltrating property to return runaways to their owners, all for a little extra that every client was willing to pay. For Sterling, it could take weeks to secure warrants and agreements to have requisitions retrieve nandroids, all at cost. If it was a legal problem, courts could take years to settle disputes as with all property related cases. For Davidson, for N.R.A.I, it could be done in a single night for much cheaper. Better yet, it cost nothing if you didn't own the nandroid. N.R.A.I was a one man band with Davidson as the sole member and the word got out regardless, Sterling was useless, this man can help you, and if people need anything, it's help. 

Davidson contemplated his situation of always needing money as he was forced to take in the horrific smells around him at the plant, wondering why it had to be a trash heap. He was constantly suppressing his stomach from vomiting up his fast-food. Hiding behind a stack of compressed garbage, Davidson scanned the outside entrance and noticed multiple security cameras were active and covering the front doors. The loading dock he needed to get into was locked up tight as well.

“Figures, I’ll need another way in,” Davidson thought, circling the trash piles and walking along the building looking for another entrance. He made his way towards the back side of the plant, spotting a window that was carelessly left open. Beneath it was a ledge just big enough to support him should he attempt to jump to it. “Well now, indifference saves me again.” Davidson began to climb a nearby block of pressed garbage, reaching the top and leaping to the ledge. His knee had scrapped the wall as he collided with it but he was barely able to hoist himself up. After checking his pants to ensure no cuts or tears happened, he climbed into the open window and found himself in an office with many desks and computers. He was happy to be able to breath again and rid himself of the smell outside. The carpet was soaked from the earlier rainstorm as it made a *plop* sound when Davidson stepped inside.

“Someone’s gettin’ reprimanded for that one in the morning,” Davidson mused with a slight chuckle. He looked around the offices and spotted no cameras or guards in the room, but heard a bizarre noise coming from deeper within the plant, were machines still running? The noise was a deep rumbling with a higher pitched drone accompanying it, unnerving him. He walked up to a nearby set of windows overlooking the interior of the plant, reminding himself of his job. “Just gotta find the dock, A-C, and get Wendy outta here.” Davidson found a few doors he could try to get out of the office he currently found himself in, with one being locked and another leading to a supply closet. He tried the third door he found and slowly opened it to get a peak inside. Seeing what appeared to be an employee break room. Davidson carefully snuck his way in, flinching backwards when he noticed a camera in the corner as he entered. He carefully leaned in again and noticed there was no red light on. In fact, the camera's lens was cracked and the cord was ripped. "I see the city investments are really paying dividends." On second thought, this was turning out to be one of his easiest illegal jobs he'd ever done. He was the only dipshit in town who would go to this length and break into a place that carried literal garbage. The Zig addicts would just ransack the landfill nearby to search for whatever wretched treasures they could try and pawn.

Finding the double doors that led to the loading and processing area of the plant, Davidson recoiled as soon as he touched it as the smell waft through the area when he opened them. He nearly puked when he was taken off guard and plugged his nose as he began to enter again. Seeing the vast and eerie area with faded browns walls, rusted equipment, and many machines that could kill and maim a human in seconds, he felt thankful that his job consisted of dealing with the more approachable and delicate family of nandroids that rarely hurt anyone. He Wanted to get out of here as soon as possible and away from the depressing atmosphere that surrounded him. Davidson located the correct loading dock, A-C, and began rummaging through the trash pile that was left there to find the nandroid with his remaining hand. The trash pile was massive and stood higher than the door to the loading dock itself. Davidson had to spend several minutes grabbing and tearing items away from the pillar of trash with no sign of the nandroid to be found. His clothes getting dirtier with every item he pulled, and his stomach getting closer to its limit. He tore a rather large piece of plastic from the pillar that caused a large amount of trash to nearly collapse on top of him. After lifting a Vincent’s Voxel Pizza Box, he felt his hand brush up against a smooth surface and started to hear noises from inside the pile. Grabbing more used boxes, paper plates, leaves, and rotting food and moving them out of the way, a hand had suddenly shot out of the pile and caused Davidson to fall back in surprise, landing onto the rusted floor and causing a sharp breath with his hand off his nose. His stomach proceeded to dry heave as he tried to suppress his reflexes and pick himself off the ground. He observed the nandroid’s hand now panicking and moving about erratically, nearly slapping him in the face as he attempted to grab it. He seized the nandroid’s arm at the base of the pile and proceeded to give it a good pull. He felt something inside the pile get loose and managed to yank out a little red headed nandroid up and out of the pile.

“Oh thank goodness you found me! Thank you so much!” the robot nanny exclaimed, her uniform covered in trash stains and fruit pieces. Davidson was taken aback as the nandroid hugged her rescuer tightly, the sudden smell of her pushing him to his breaking point. He shoved the nandroid back and ripped his bandanna off while she placed her hands up to her cheeks in surprise, “Oh I nearly forgot! Never initiate a hug with a human when greeting them! I am so-” her apologies were cut off from Davidson vomiting onto the pile of trash he found her in, small chunks of hamburger and cheese were visible. “Oh...my god. I wasn't told that would happen. I’m so sorry mister!”

Davidson proceeded to finish ejecting the contents of his late meal and spit the remainder of it out of his mouth. “No, that’s...that’s not what happens.” Davidson explained, wiping his mouth and putting his face covering back on, coughing. “We’re in a waste plant and you reek.”

“Oh! We are? Heh, sorry. Lack of smell and all! Who are you mister? I’m Wendy, Sterling Robotics model two nandroid.” she clasped her hands together as she explained what should be obvious, a smile never leaving her face.

“Uh, hi there...my name is Davidson, Davidson Randolph,” suddenly hearing a man whistling in the break room above. “Crap, there’s the night watch, come on we gotta get out of here.”

The nandroid’s face lit up in surprise, her cheeks glowing red, as Davidson grabbed her hand and proceeded to run back up the stairs to the double doors. Davidson waited for the whistling to fade away and Slowly peered into the break room. He saw no one there and entered as quickly and quietly as he could, keeping Wendy close to his side. As the two entered the office, they nearly made it to the window before hearing a door open on the other side. Davidson grabbed Wendy and covered her mouth while she “gasped” in confusion, hiding under a nearby desk. The smell positively reeked throughout the office and Davidson could hear the guard stop for a moment and sniff, clearly noticing something was amiss.

Looking towards the window, the guard had mused quietly to himself, “Place smells worse than my shitter, told them idiots not to leave this open, carpet’s all ruined now,” and proceeded to shut the window and exit back to the break room. The pair breathed a sigh of relief with the two of them emerging from under the desk and cracking the window back open to escape from this awful place. Shutting the window back down on the way out, Davidson began to feel elated for successfully escaping and completing two retrievals in one night. During the walk back to the front Wendy had stared at this mysterious savior and began asking him questions.

“So mister, did my owner send you to get me?” the nandroid queried, walking with her hands together and carrying herself with a calm demeanor and simplistic stride. "Or is this a kidnapping, you didn't break into a waste plant to kidnap me did you? Who would do that? Did you do that?"

“No of course not, O'Hara sent me. He’s waiting for us up ahead,” Davidson replied, ensuring to take the same path as before and avoid any of the cameras that were actually working.

“Oh he is so great! He and the Misses have such a wonderful family. I’m very lucky to have been assigned to them.”

“Wonderful huh? That’s not the impression I got from hearing about how you ended up here.” The nandroid smile’s remained, but her head had shifted down and she crossed her arms.

“That’s just a, what was the word, a spat. We’re taught that this may occur within any family situation. They’ll sort it out in no time.” Davidson always admired a nandroid's ability to remain chipper.

“What if they don’t?” Davidson asked, awaiting an answer that he already knew.

“My job is to care for the family I was assigned, I’ll never stop looking after those children so long as the family will have me, regardless of what happens to the parents,” Wendy answered, her smile only gleamed brighter at the affirmation of her purpose.

“Of course Wendy, that’s the way you were made. Look, there’s O’Hara’s car.” Davidson pointed out the car to Wendy and helped hoist her over the fence before climbing it himself. O’Hara eventually spotted the two and emerged from his car to greet the pair, covering his nose as soon as the two got near him.

“Wendy you reek!” O’Hara exclaimed.

“I wonder why.” Davidson asked with a half-cocked grin.

“Probably because she was in a waste plant ya damn fool!” O’Hara responded, patting Davidson on the back before realizing he too had trash stains on his clothing and wiped it off.

“Oh Sir, I’m so happy you got someone to get me out. I was so afraid of being abandoned when the Misses shut me down.” Wendy was glowing with excitement and happiness to have been retrieved. It was so palpable that Davidson couldn’t help but smile as the two traded words of relief. He was happy to see the nandroid safe, but that didn’t stop him from completing a deal.

“Well now Mr. O’Hara if we can finish this arrangement I’ll happily be on my way and the two of you can get back to your lives.” Davidson said as he eagerly awaiting his payment.

“Oh of course my boy! Of course! Do you take checks?” O’Hara said, opening a checkbook and grabbing a pen from his suit.

Davidson looked away from the pair and muttered, "Yup, I knew it," under his breath. "Normally I take cash, but I have other pressing matters so I'll accept it this time. The usual fee with an added seven percent."

“Now I’m no Shyster boy! A deal’s a deal!” O’Hara yelled, writing the check and handing it over to the gentlemen. “Come on now Wendy, we gotta get you cleaned and back to work!”

“Thanks for coming to get me Mr. Randolph,” Wendy said, looking back and waving goodbye to the man who retrieved her, getting into the trunk of O’Hara’s car. Davidson watched as the two sped off away from the plant and returned to the city. He got into his truck and hurried home as soon as he can, wanting to return to the oddball nandroid currently laying on his operating table.

After rushing through the door to his house, he proceeded past the Kitchen and Front room down a short hallway and making a left into his bedroom, throwing his clothes into a basket, he walked across the hallway into the bathroom to shower and plopped himself onto his bed after finishing, wishing only to rest for a minute. He quickly drifted into sleep with thoughts of the nandroid he found at the fast-food joint filling his head. “Her emotional matrix, those configurations, what happened to her?” was the last thought he had before losing consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	5. The Most Hated Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davidson deals with a sordid visitor.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

Was the first thing Davidson heard while zipping up from his slumber. Looking at his clock, he could tell it was nine A.M. on a Saturday.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

He heard the banging noise at his door once again and got up to see who was bothering him this early in the morning. Peering through his peephole, he rested his head on the door and gave an exasperated sigh. “This fucker,” he whispered to himself while undoing the deadbolt and lock. Opening the door, he saw what he could only kindly describe as a robust gentlemen greeting him with a smile and a piece of paper in his hand. “Well if it isn’t my favorite Sterling employee, Tobias Clench. Back to raid my garage again huh?” Davidson joked, taking the paper from Tobias and quickly realizing it was yet another warrant to allow Tobias to check the nandroids under his care for defects.

“Just doin’ my job David,” Tobias chuckled wearing the biggest grin possible and waltzing into Davidson’s house.

“Tobias, every fuckin’ month you convince that fossilized judge to sign this ridiculous warrant and every fuckin’ month you bother me for an hour to search and test every nandroid I got and every fuckin’ month you walk outta here with absolutely nothing. That is not your job.”

“Ah but it is, hunting down malfunctioning pieces of equipment is the main goal of a Requisitions Agent such as I to, heh, protect the integrity of the Sterling name,” Tobias remarked with a face that would cause even a pacifist to throttle him. He helped himself and walked into Davidson’s living room, dirtying the carpet with his cheap shoes. 

“Pft, you don’t believe a word of that. You just managed to find a job that makes you a legal sadist.” Tobias had stopped and turned to face Davidson, placing his hands on his face and faking a gasp.

“Now those are strong words, I’m shocked at such an accusation!” Tobias laughed once again and Davidson could hear the ash rattling in his wind pipe. The two entered the garage, Davidson following to make sure he wouldn’t try any of his usual tricks. Many of the buyers he sold his refurbished nandroids to had told him how Tobias lied and "found" outmodes in their inventory. The business people hated him for getting that mark placed on their records. He spotted the nandroid from last night still on his table and knew this would be Tobias’ first target. Davidson stopped in his tracks upon noticing her, worried that the emotional condition he found her in would be detected as a defect. He quickly tried to forge a way out from having Tobias test her. “Well lookie here! I see you two were busy last night eh? Normally I’d ask how it compares but you’d have to be with a woman first to answer that.”

“She’s in the middle of assessment and repairs, other work got in the way,” Davidson replied, standing close to the nandroid and double checking that her clothes and hair were still on the desk.

“Well there ain’t no exceptions.” Tobias began to reach his hand down and lift the nandroid’s head but Davidson was quicker and held it down.

“She’s not an active nandroid and is in the middle of repairs, that means you can’t test her Tobias.”

“Bullshit, I can connect and test her just fine. I know you’re scared of losing your only girlfriend but-” Davidson had leaned in closer and was getting more annoyed with the fat man currently in his garage.

“She’s not on the market and is my private property, you can’t test her.”

“Read the warrant again boy, I have the full authority to test every nandroid under your possession, even private ones. Now back off or I’ll have the entire company and police force on your head. Whose fault is it that we have to do this again?” A tense standoff occurred between the two with Davidson finally moving back and reading the warrant Tobias gave him. The judge who ordered this was nearing eighty-seven years old and didn’t understand the finer details of Davidson’s business, ignoring how it is personal policy for Davidson to scrap nandroids that had defects. 

In essence, Sterling did not have to personally track and obtain nandroids that were out of date, out of warranty, or that were abandoned. Although they offer services to handle these three cases, poorly. Legally speaking, Sterling only had to forcibly take one type of robot they manufactured. The type of robot that can disobey orders. The type of robot that cannot perform its intended function. The type of robot that malfunctions and poses a danger to those around it. They were called outmodes. Every model one android they produced was labeled an outmode by the government. Model two androids that failed Sterling's test suite were also given an outmode label and the requisitions officers they hired were given legal authority to rip them from their families and offer replacements. Androids that were also labeled as obsolete were categorized as an outmode, but people were far less caring about handling these. They would rather use them to some capacity despite warnings from government authorities. 

This judge would routinely allowed Tobias to search Davidson’s home, believing his nandroid retrieval and repair business was housing outmoded robots of all kinds. Not like he could convince him otherwise with the judge supporting the judgment of an employee of one of the most successful corporations over his prattling. 

Davidson sighed and placed the paper back down to look over at Tobias taking out a small PDA and plugging a cord from it into the nandroid’s neck. While the initial tests showed only some irregularities with her processes, something that was common to AI with learning modules like nandroids, Tobias had a test suite from the best engineers at Sterling. He became more worried as time went on, thinking back to the state he found her in last night, noting how he saw nandroids in worse conditions, some smashed to pieces. But seeing her depressive state and still being active, twitching in pain, there was something about it he couldn’t explain…

His thoughts were cut short when he noticed Tobias’ face getting more annoyed and finally the machine beeped a chirpy tune and indicated a passed nandroid, Davidson feeling relief and confusion.

“You’re lucky kid, one test short of a failure.” Davidson walked away from the desk and got closer to the back wall where the other nandroids he currently had were being stored, his cocky friendliness towards Tobias returning.

“I’m sure HR tells you the same thing every time you go in for a psych evaluation.” Tobias had chuckled at the remark. Davidson wasn’t sure if it was because he was amused or if it was the truth. Tobias carried out his routine sweep, opening pods and testing nandroids down the line, “So, how did you get a set of these containers anyway?” he remarked while doing so.

“People abandon a lot of things in the trash, even these.” Tobias took the cord from his device and began wagging it at Davidson.

“David these are Sterling owned nandroid pods for shipment and storage, they ain’t throwing these out.”

“Hey, believe what you’d like.” The two getting quiet as Tobias tested the nandroids and Davidson watching him, not reacting as each nandroid came up green and passed. As the last nandroid chirped a passed test, Tobias resumed the sad bastard look that Davidson knew him best for. It was the best part of Tobias’ visits as it meant he would be leaving and Davidson could resume his day. “Wow, not a single failure, it’s almost like I test these myself and remove the outmodes or something.”

“Hmph, I know you carry outmodes in here David, and I’m gonna catch you.” Tobias removed the cord from the last nandroid and collected his things before heading for Davidson’s front door, Davidson opening it to escort him out.

“Sure Tobias, sure. See you next month.” Tobias took one step out of Davidson’s house before stopping and turning to face him, his face practically screaming that he wanted to hit him.

“David, there’s no such thing as a perfect streak,” Tobias started, piercing Davidson with his usual psychotic stare. “One of these days you’re gonna slip up, you’re gonna make a mistake, and when you do I’ll be right there over you, and I’m gonna knock your dick in the dirt. I’ll make you regret screwing us all over in court you little shit and when I do? I won’t take your stupid broken pieces of crap, I’ll take everything.”

“Well in the meanwhile Tobias, feel free to take this.” Davidson slammed the door in Tobias’ face and watched from the kitchen window as he huffed his way back to his car and leave. The poor bastard was speeding onto the curb and leaving tire tracks in the cul-de-sac. Davidson breathed a sigh of relief and removed his glasses to rub his eyes. He began his morning routine, eating breakfast, watching shows and checking his messages. He saw an open schedule for the day and was ready to fix her. He knew the repairs would be a difficult affair but saw no harm in trying to improve his aptitude for it.

Of course, this was only half the truth...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	6. Integrate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davidson fixes the nandroid. The two meet for the first time. An odd arrangement is made.

"FUCK!" Davidson had burnt his finger as the wiring short circuited and fried another optical. He slammed his hand on the desk in anger and tried to wash it under cold water, doing little to alleviate the pain. The repair was turning out to be one of the hardest he'd ever done. Most of the wiring had to be done over and the majority of the chips had to be replaced. "I'm practically building this thing from scratch for fuck sake." Davidson noted, shutting the sink off and staring outside his kitchen window. "Why am I even trying to fix this damn thing." He burnt out his last blue optical and he considered stopping now and scrapping her. Memories of that day when he saw the nandroids being loaded onto the trucks and shipped out to their awaiting families filled his head.

"I know you're angry David but there's no reason for all this. You can help us sort this out." he said.

"Go fuck yourself." Davidson responded. He got into his deep blue truck and took off from the building.

He took a deep breath and sat back down in his chair, ripping out the tray that held the blue opticals and tossing it over his shoulder. Without hesitating, he opened the next tray down and was relieved to find several green eyes. "She's gonna look stupid but at least I'll get it working." He destroyed two green eyes trying to wire them, loathing how difficult it was to do so correctly. For Davidson, the opticals were the most complicated piece to fix. A single wire out of place could potentially break it and it wasn't hard for Davidson's large hands to do just that. It was only on the third attempt that he got it working and twisted the eye into place. "Finally. I never want to do that again. This repair is one for the books." He pulled up the nandroid's registration file and saw her registered name as 'Tabby'. Leveraging his knowledge from back in those days, he changed the owner registration to himself. What usually had to be done with costly hacks, he could do in seconds, verbally even. It was what separated him from competing nandroid retrieval specialists in the city. The legalities of his setup on the other hand, was a different matter.

With the registration complete, the repairs finished, and it being damn near four in the afternoon, it was time to turn it on and see if any potential problems lingered. Disconnecting the cord from the computer, Davidson lightly touched the robot’s hand and saw the red glow it left behind, confirming the action. He heard the familiar sputtering sounds of her internal motors and saw with excitement as the nandroid’s ‘eyelids’ reset to their closed positions before slowly opening, her eyes glowing. She began to move and Davidson remained silent as he backed away from the table to give her space. A moment of confusion and realization occurred in the nandroid’s mind, as just seconds ago the final lights had gone out. Then, a sudden wave of the brightest orbs she had ever seen suddenly lit up inside her. Her curiosity and confusion only grew as she took in the new environment she found herself in. Such a small building with rough textures and messy carpets. Windows that weren’t taller than her and no pillars to be found, where was she? She placed a hand on her head, giving a grimace of pain and confusion. Her storage began to show images. She could see herself in the chair with the master over her. Her memories causing feelings of great anxiety as the tool inched closer to her face.

Davidson approached her and spoke out, “Hey, you alright?” The nandroid’s eyes shot over to him as she let out a scream. She began to panic and fell from the operating table. Davidson was taken aback as she scrambled to the nearest corner of his garage and curled into a ball.

“Please stop! Don’t hurt me anymore! I didn’t do anything wrong I promise!” She screamed and cried out for it stop and left Davidson dumbstruck. He slowly moved his hands up to turn off the operating light. The two being illuminated by faint beams of light coming from the closed blinds in the kitchen. He watched as the nandroid began to quietly weep and covered her face to protect it.

“I’m… I’m going to walk up to you now, is that alright? I won’t hurt you.” Davidson didn’t want to startle her again and took a step forward to console her.

“Stay away! I don’t want it to hurt again!” She cried out and Davidson retracted his foot and stood still.

“Okay… that’s uh, that’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Davidson Randolph. I found you in the garbage, do you remember? I put you into my transport device? The suitcase looking thing. Do you remember?” Davidson crouched and tried to not tower over her with his height and size.

“The suitcase… the red truck with the letters on it. N.R.A.I.”

“Yes, that’s right! N.R.A.I is my business.” Davidson saw the nandroid shift her arms and saw her glowing optics. If she could cry, she probably would. “It’s pronounced ‘Nur-eye’. I find nandroids like you and fix them up. Everything is okay now, I’m here to help you.”

The nandroid remained silent, still curled up in a ball and weeping. He was unsure what to do to help her. He slowly crawled toward her, their eyes never leaving each other as she watched his every moment. When he got closer, he raised his hand to touch her and she flinched as he gently placed it on her head. Her weeping got louder before it faded, she raised her head and moved her arms down. Davidson could see her different colored optics glowing as she was shivering in fear.

“Please don’t hurt me…” she said, looking at him with the same depressive stare he found her in.

“I’m… not going to.” Davidson noticed the nandroid was essentially naked and went back to the desk to show her hair and uniform. “Your stuff is right here, they’re a bit dirty from the garbage though so we’ll have to clean them. I know a tailor that can quickly sew these holes in your dress.”

The nandroid looked over and noticed the pods alongside the back wall. Davidson expected her to panic again but saw she was rather intrigued by them. Perhaps them being Sterling storage pods helped ease her worries. “There are other girls in these, did… did you find them?”

“Some of them, most of them were found by others and they called me to get them. I decide if they can be fixed, then sell them to second-hand stores. That’s my job. I made a specific deal for these ones, the buyer is coming in a couple days to get them.” Davidson tried his best to appear relaxed while not making a move that would freak her out. He saw sad nandroids, worried nandroids. But nothing was like this before. This machine in his house was starting to elicit feelings of pity from him just like that night. He couldn’t explain what was happening, just that he wanted to help.

“Are you going to sell me too?” The nandroid appeared concerned which struck Davidson as odd, she would want this right? To return to her work?

“Well… that was sorta the plan I guess. After I got you fixed up and cleaned.” Davidson, for but a moment, saw her worry grow and she started shivering again. He was at a lost for what to do. He desperately looked for anyway to console her but it appeared as though she didn’t want to be sold. Was Tobias’ test wrong? Was she actually an outmode that wanted to ignore her function? “Do you not want to be a nandroid anymore? To do what you were made to do?”

Her eyes widened at the accusation. “N-no! I want to… but… I don’t want to die again.” Davidson was surprised at her choice of words, his curiosity with her growing exponentially as he uncovered more things about this wayward nanny. They arrived at an impasse it seemed. He didn’t want to lose this machine to someone else and she didn’t want to be sold to another family. His brain suddenly fired a neuron that carried an odd solution to this predicament. He looked over the other rooms of his house. Clothes were carelessly tossed aside, dirty dishes were piled, and trash was littered. It was partially due to his laziness. Partially due to other things that led his home to such a state. He had no family to speak off. It may have been a bizarre concept to him… but maybe…

“If you don’t want to leave… maybe you could stay with me? Would you like to be assigned to me? I don’t have kids or a wife or anything but… now that I think about it my business is only getting busier and I can’t keep up with some of the house work anymore.” She lowered her head in thought and considered the possibility. With no wife or kids this may have been the opportunity she wanted. It seemed as though she could trust this man and the alternative was much worse in her mind.

“I… I think I would like that, I could try... could I... could I stay with you? At least for a little while?”

“Sure, I could use the help. I wouldn’t mind if you stayed with me Tabby.” Her faint smile was dashed at the mention of her name, her head lowering again as she was reminded of worse times. Davidson noticed her reaction, “Do you not like that name? We can change it if you want.”

Her face lit up at the prospect, a full genuine smile erupting from her face plate. “I would like that very much master.”

Davidson felt embarrassed when she addressed him as such, he felt it was silly for nandroids to address their owners with such a term when their point was to meld with the family to a certain extent. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“What should I call you then?” She gave Davidson a look of genuine confusion, this was surely something she wasn’t use to. This was most likely imprinted on her from her previous owner, he met several nandroids that showed this behavior.

“I dunno, most call me Mr. Randolph, but, eh, if you don’t wanna do that… Heh, call me sire then.” He was partially joking, not really caring in the end what she referred to him as. “What about you? What name would you like?” He said as he kneeled down beside her.

“I… don’t know.” She seemed lost when deciding a name. Davidson realized that asking them to designate themselves was something they just weren’t programmed to do. He looked around the room for names and saw his newspaper with the TV guide on it, noting the sitcom rerun that was airing tonight.

“What about… Lu-… Lu-hmm, no... how about-” he was cut off from finishing his thought and recommending another name by her.

“Lulu? Lulu… I like that name. But it doesn’t end with a y…”

“Well I mean… it doesn’t have to, that’s just a marketing gimmick Sterling adopted. Do you want that name?” The nandroid uncurled herself. She looked like she was happy for the first time in years as she contemplated it.

“Yes! Please, call me Lulu. Okay… Sire?” She fully lowered her hands onto the ground, the two staring at each other with smiles and happiness. The two forgetting their troubles for a moment and merely enjoying the company of the other.

“Alright then, it’s a pleasure to meet you Lulu. I hope you enjoy it here.” Davidson reached out his hand to help her up and she slowly grabbed it in return. “Let’s get you cleaned up now.” Davidson knew this case was going to be an odd one. But he never expected to adopt one of his own recovered nandroids, he never saw the point until now.

The two didn’t know what to make of this arrangement. But Davidson couldn’t let this one go, he was intrigued by her as familiar feelings from the past bubbled their way up to him that he failed to recognize. She herself was happy to be given a second chance after being abandoned to waste away in the rain. She hoped this time would be better, that she could succeed. Davidson considered it odd for a nandroid to be helping someone like him. But this is how things happened. 

What the two didn’t realize, was how odd things were going to get from this point on…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	7. Breaking The Yolk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week has passed with slow progress between Lulu and Davidson.
> 
> Perhaps an all balanced breakfast can help.

The absolute silence within Davidson’s house had carried on throughout the night. Usually, it was only broken by the sound of tired footsteps and awkward fumbling. For the past week, a new sound had disturbed this peace. The nandroid stood on top of her charging pad and was plugged into it, her mind waiting for the exact second to awaken. The darkness of the house began to shine in the morning rays, a beam of light traveling across the ground as the sun rose. When it illuminated the nandroid’s face, at the exact moment of 8AM, her eyes gently opened and her system began to resume their normal processes. She ensured her hair was still correctly tied with the sire’s green ribbon he gave her, hanging the tail over her shoulder. Her uniform, while having obvious patches and sewing marks on it, was still prim and proper. Lastly, her hat was right where she left it, placed firmly upon the crown of her head. It had only been one week since she was allowed to stay with Davidson. The pods now laid empty as the nandroid’s within had been sold to be sold once again. 

Lulu didn’t quite know how to explain what she felt when she told Davidson she didn’t want to go. Maybe it was the only place she felt safe. She stepped off the newly build pad from the corner of the garage, noticing another nandroid was left on the table, wires everywhere and half the panels missing. The sight of such things disturbed her, not wanting to see someone that looked so much like herself in such a state. She told herself she would get use to it in time, although she wondered how long it would take. 

The first thing for her was the morning agenda. She warmed up the sire’s computer systems if they had been turned off the night before. The paperboy had clumsily tossed the sire’s morning news as he passed the house, missing the mailbox completely and not even getting it into Davidson’s yard. Her retrieval of it would always give her a chance to see the neighborhood around her. She was far from Hawthorn indeed, everything around her seemed so much smaller and dirtier. But the people were happy all the same, it was perplexing. Her final task was usually to brew the morning coffee. But today she would perform an additional task she was excited to do again, the fine art of crafting a breakfast meal.

Cooking fascinated the nandroid, taking a handful of items and changing them to form new concoctions was her method of being creative. She adored the smiles and happiness that it would bring to a child’s face. Nothing would excite a human more than fine dining and she wanted to understand what it was about it that caused such appreciation. She had no way of experiencing it like they did, but maybe the joy she felt as she watched was something similar?

She began to heat the sire’s coffee pot and lit the fire on his stove top. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t used this in over four years, how lucky of her to find a reasonably priced repairman to get it working again. The sire’s refrigerator was another mess entirely, stacked with left overs from grease traps and filled with cheap cups from the same locales. He agreed to let her fill it with the proper essentials; eggs, milk, orange juice. She even found an old breadbox that was gathering dust in his closet that could be put to use again. Despite everything, she was able to do cooking aplenty at her previous location, stock wasn’t a concern with her family. Here, she had to work with a budget, plenty of generics had to replace her usual quality brands. She even had to go out of her way to another store after Davidson warned her about going to the closest one.

As she finished getting everything for the meal, she heard a door slowly creep open behind her in the hallway. Lulu walked over and saw the sire stepping out as groggy as ever, barely able to keep his eyes opened.

“G-good... good morning, sire.” She hesitated as she spoke, seeing his eyes grow wider when he noticed her.

“Oh... hey...” He quickly scurried into the bathroom with a towel and some clothes, leaving the nandroid alone in the hallway again. She silently returned to the kitchen and began to run through her cooking subroutine. This past week was filled with awkward conversations like that and she knew it full well. She could feel this barrier between the two as she settled into her new life, realizing that he never had a nandroid before. But he’s around them all the time right? Why was he like this? Was it her? This was when the two were together at all, as she was alone in the house most of the time. The sire was often out on jobs or fixing something in the garage, she hoped this weekend would give them time to get use to one another, but she carried a sense of doubt around that.

With a pipping hot pan at her finger tips, she cracked an egg on the edge of her skillet and attempted to separate the two halves of its shell. When she placed her hands on the egg and started to pull, she froze. A familiar sense of anxiety ran through her metallic spine and into her mind, this was usually the one step she always ruined. She could never quite break it right, it would always flop out or a piece of the shell would fall into the yolk. Her motors would spur and sputter whenever such precision was required and she anticipated the sounds at any moment. The sound irritated him, he would hate it and always screamed for it to stop. But she couldn’t, he needed his breakfast and she had to make it. But, he hated the noise, she waited for the feeling of his approaching steps and the shuffling of his jacket. Where would it be this time? The arm? The leg? Her head? Better make sure the pan handle is out of the way, she didn’t want to hit it on the way down and spill grease everywhere. She wish she didn’t have to dread such things, that he could smile again. She hoped one day she wouldn’t be the one to make him frown…

Lulu suddenly heard a door open behind her, the sire had stepped out and went back to his room as steam escaped from the bathroom. She looked back at her pan and heard sizzling sounds, seeing two halves of an egg shell in her hands. A perfectly formed egg was cooking. She was utterly still in disbelief. There was no sputtering, no hitching, no screaming. There was only the perfectly smooth motion of separation. She blinked her eyes and still saw the egg there, a second time to confirm, a third to quell all doubt. It took her a moment to remember that she had been repaired. She wouldn’t have to deal with damaged joints or weak motors anymore. She was elated, and cracked a second egg into the pan. True, the sire said he wanted two, but it was more for her to relish in such an eloquent act. She wanted to crack every egg in the carton, but doing it twice a day from now on had to suffice. She wouldn’t admit it, but this was a memory she would personally archive in her storage space.

She was happily bobbing when Davidson left his room and chucked his dirty clothes by the washer in the hallway. She didn’t seem to notice him and he stared at her without making a sound. “Well, that’s the happiest I’ve seen her all week,” he thought to himself. “Wonder what’s gotten into her.” He entered the garage and saw Lulu had already started his computer. He plugged the nandroid currently resting on his table into it and place his microphone nearby. When he began to type, his attention was snatched as his monitor glitched and the characters on it were temporarily corrupted. It fixed itself as quickly as it appeared but it still weirded Davidson out. “Huh that was odd, thought I saw an eye for a sec. This damn thing better not be dying again.”

Lulu looked over at Davidson after his utterance and approached him with slight caution. “Greetings… Sire. The paper is waiting for you on the table. Breakfast will be ready promptly.”

“Hmm?” Davidson stared a Lulu for a second before quickly nodding, “Oh, right, I uh… yeah I forgot you were doing that now. Just uh… sure, I’ll be right there.” Davidson stammered while unplugging the nandroid and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

“Do you normally eat breakfast sire?” Lulu asked, preparing the bread and putting them into Davidson’s dusty toaster.

“Um… no, I usually just sorta eat whenever I need to. I don’t really plan these things.” Davidson shrugged while picking up the paper. He went over the classifieds to check if his ad was there and seeing if any news relating to nandroids was published.

“I see… you go out at night quite a bit, you don’t work a shift?” Lulu's chipper attitude and more relaxed demeanor allowed her to start taking an interest in her new owner.

“Well… I use to. Now a days though I just work whenever I need to. This isn’t a forty hour job anymore.” Davidson didn’t look at Lulu as she asked her questions, keeping his focus on the news of the day.

The toaster popped up two fresh slices for Lulu to butter, the egg cooked perfectly, the orange juice shining as the sun reflected though it. She nearly forgot the two delectable pieces of sausage as they finished simmering in the same pan as the eggs. Lulu prepared the breakfast plate and served them with a smile, the first time she had done so since the day Davidson took her in. "Please enjoy sire, this is a special occasion."

“This is… great. I mean, yeah this is great! Thank you Lulu. Man it’s... it’s been a long time since I’ve had eggs and sausage.” Davidson placed his paper down, noting that it was a slow news day today apart from the usual reports of battlefield statistics and political drama.

“You’re very welcome sire.” Lulu did a little curtsy and began to clean off the pans. Davidson took his utensils and cut into the egg, noting the yolk had been broken.

“Oh good! I forgot to tell you I like the yolk cooked.” Lulu stopped what she was doing and turned around.

“Ah! I’m sorry sire, I forgot to ask! I’ll remember next time I promise!” Davidson noted Lulu’s usual speed to forgive and make promises. He didn’t want to pry into why she did this, not yet anyway.

“It’s fine Lulu really.” Davidson began to enjoy his meal, a sense of nostalgia accompanying every bite.

“I… okay, thank you sire. Are there any chores you wish for me to do today?” Davidson began to think, he was so focused on his job that he failed to actually get a routine going for her. His mental note taking to set all that up stopped when he looked at the clock.

“Ah shit I nearly forgot.” Davidson rose from his seat and put on another flannel shirt from his closet, wrapping a belt through his jeans.

“What’s the matter sire?’ Lulu looked concerned and a little sad that her sire was rushing to leave.

“Someone called me last night asking for me to come help them with a problem. I gotta run down there real quick. We’ll set something up when I get back.” Davidson took his breakfast and collapsed it into a sandwich before putting it into a bag and chugging the remainder of his juice. He grabbed his hat and keys before heading towards the door. “While I’m gone you can finish those dishes, clean the bathroom, and dust off the stuff in the garage. Oh and Lulu?”

“Yes Sire?” Davidson was pointing towards the nandroid on the table, Lulu hoping she wouldn’t have to do something with it.

“Don’t touch that or plug it back in, I'll deal with it later.” Davidson shut the door behind him and Lulu watched as he headed for his truck and sped off from the cul-de-sac.

Lulu looked at the nandroid and mimicked a sigh of relief. She was fine with everything else, but she really didn’t want to touch that thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	8. Neutralize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davidson helps some morally questionable characters handle a pest problem.

Going into a trash heap on a call was a first, Davidson had a tendency to worry about firsts. As he pulled up to the apartment complex, with its overfilled dumpsters and rusted swing sets, there was nary a worried nerve in his body. This placed screamed one thing to all who past by it, police and civvy alike. Davidson was called to a drug den. He casually walked across the main plaza within the center of the apartment, noticing there wasn’t many people around. For those who were here, he tried to avoid looking directly at them. If his suspicions were correct, any attention he drew to himself was bad. Everyone knew everyone else here and he was the odd man out. That could lead to a severe injury if he wasn’t careful. 

Apartment room number 117 awaited him. He knocked on the door with several taps, avoiding his usual fist knock to prevent them assuming the police were here. As Davidson waited for the person inside to answer, he took inventory of the hallway he was in. Two people on his right, no obvious signs of weaponry, most likely concealing them in their pants. One person on the left, not even hiding the shotgun leaned up against the wall as he stood still and stared at Davidson. No sooner had Davidson realized his only exit out of the hallway was back out the way he came did the client open the door and greet him.

“Ey yes sir, yes sir indeed, you’re that robo-catcher right?” The man was wearing a basic dress shirt and suspender combo, typical of tough guys in this part of town. Davidson could only wonder which family this chump was apart of. He took a cigarette and lit it as he stepped outside and closed the door.

“Yup, that’s me. Mr. Robo-Catcher.” Davidson took out a cigarette of his own and had the man light it as well. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, you said you had a retrieval. I thought ‘workin’ stiffs’ like yourself don’t get up this early.”

“Huh? Nah man, been up since ‘bout three, collectin’ from clubs and bookies. You ever go to The Setting Star Club? They recently got this real nice dame there, beautiful voice but kinda stiff, actin’ like one of them ro-” Davidson had interrupted the man, clearly being flippant and not paying attention to his spiel.

“This is the last place I expected a nandroid to be if I’m honest, what’s going on.” Davidson took a puff of his cigarette and scanned the hallway, all three people were still staring right at him.

“Ey chill man. Polite conversation is a hard thing to come by these days. You a fan of Ciretako?” Davidson’s brows raised as he looked down at his black shirt, the band’s logo visible from underneath his opened flannel.

Davidson saw the inquisitive eyes of those around him and started to get the feeling his presence was not announced to whomever ran this place. He finally got it through his thick skull that he had to tread more lightly than usual. “Um, Heh, yeah, I like ‘em. One of my favorite bands, love their experimental style and lyrical grace. You?”

“Yeah yeah I dig it, went to see one of their shows during the last tour, great stuff, played in some of our clubs. Comon, I’ll show you where it is.” The man led Davidson passed the two thugs on the right and around the corner. He laughed as soon as they were out of earshot of everyone. “Sir, somehow you are dimmer than the lights in this hallway.”

“Yeah, cause calling someone on the phone to come here without telling your boss is a real smart play. What’s the deal, you guys do cocaine? Or do you give LSD to med students.” 

“We uh, specialize in our services. Kinda like you I guess.” Davidson gave a chuckle at the comparison.

“Uh huh, so what, you guys got a wayward nanny or something? You know I currently only handle Sterling’s stock of nandroids right?” The gangster had led Davidson to a rotted out door with a guard out front, wearing similar clothes to Davidson’s client.

He gave the man a handshake and pat on the cheek. “Hey McGee ya crazy killa you! How you guys do on that work.”

The man nodded in return. “Ey boss, we closed off the vents surrounding it, you’ll get it to the main ventilation system from here.”

“Ey lookatchu, smart man strong hands, I won’t forget this aight? Now get outta here. Get deh boys ready to head out we got that uh, you know that thing later today.” The man walked away as the client entered and waved Davidson in as well, the room was a basic supply closet but with metallic vents along the bottom. He shut the door and walked over to one of the vent paths that went out of one wall and into another. “So I hear you only handle Sterling’s junk, but word on the street is that fake nannies ain’t the only thing you deal with.”

“What’s that suppose to mean.” Davidson shot a glare at him.

“As we both know, this is a place that best serves public interest by staying off police’s radar. Especially due to the product we serve.” Davidson chewed on that statement and wondered, why was the product of high concern compared to the other illegal drugs they could be shipping. “This particular problem is best handled by someone whose policy ain’t to alert said police whenever they find something that requires a search and lockdown, capeesh?” The man proceeded to swiftly kick the vent beside him. Davidson was taken aback less by the kick and more by the rattling sounds that came afterwards. It moved down the vent and into the wall before the sound couldn’t be heard anymore.

“It’s… in the vents?” Davidson raised an eyebrow as the man proceeded to laugh and nod his head.

“See, couple boys went to the storage on the higher floors. They in there, checkin’ product, and they SAY that a robot broke out of one of the crates. They freak out and just whip out their guns all ‘BLAM BLAM’ and it’s all flyin’ everywhere and kicks one of ‘em in the face. Next thing they know it runs away and crawls in the vents, been there ever since.” Davidson was contemplating the situation and rubbed his chin in thought. “But see that ain’t the most interestin’ bit, they said that it looked like some old comic book shit they saw on tv. Big ol’ round head, no clothes.”

“Did it have something poking out of its head.” Davidson leaned up against the wall and was staring directly at the man, already piecing together the nature of his requested presence.

“Hm… yeah it did, they said it had some radio rod poking out or somethin’.” Davidson took a puff of his cigarette and thought about everything that was said. He stayed silent for an uncomfortable amount of time before looking at the gangster dead on.

“You make Zig here don’t you.” Davidson grinned as every piece fell into place.

“Now hey, I called you to fix a problem, not play detective, that ain’t your business.”

“Ho ho ho~~~! BOY!” Davidson laughed and clapped his hands together. “Man aren’t you guys fucked. You make Zig in the middle of the city and you got a model one Sterling robot crawlin’ all over your vents. If someone not in your family finds it you’re gonna have cops and Sterling requisition agents all over the place.”

“Ey keep it down ya fuckin’ spaz! You think we don’t know that? Look, we need you to get it outta here before that happens.” The man opened the door and looked outside to ensure no one was listening. Closing it as Davidson finished his outburst.

“Aight ‘wiseguy’, I’ll handle your little problem for you. Just let me grab my gear and I’ll be back.” Davidson opened the door and walked out with the gangster following.

“Better keep your mouth shut about this, we own this city and everything in it.” The two stopped in front of the entrance with Davidson looking the man over. He came off as a two-bit punk and Davidson guessed he commanded very little, seeing as they couldn’t handle one loose robot in their building. Why these bozos were given the task of making Zig was something he couldn’t discern. Then again, Zig was a very dangerous drug, regardless if you sold or made it. People would make it outside of town, in the mountainous forests to the north or the desert waste in the south. Only the brain dead type would make it in the city where all the cops were and that’s exactly what was in front of Davidson.

“If you wanna make the whole neighborhood blind that ain’t my issue. Frankly speaking? I can’t fathom a fuck to give. I got better things to do than play neighborhood watch. Consider that my Omertà.” Davidson and the man walked back outside to his truck, Davidson climbing into the back of it. 

“So why you livin’ in this section of the city then.” The man asked, Davidson jumping back out after he grabbed his rod and transport suitcase.

“Easy, it’s cheap as hell and no one pays any attention, too busy looking for drug dens where they make crap like, I dunno, Zig. It’s worth it to deal with the occasional break in from cocky crooks.”

“Oh yeah, real funny man. You gonna put it in a suitcase like some mob boss?” Davidson took the cigarette out of his mouth and stomped it out on the floor.

“Eyup, that’s the plan. Now let’s get your pest out of here shall we?” The two returned inside the building and began to climb up the staircase. As they climbed, Davidson couldn’t help but take in the grand environment he found himself in. The staircase rails were damaged, dirt and litter adorned every floor and every corner he saw on the way up. The lights in the building had a sickly green glow that produced a feeling Davidson could only describe as being half dead. Although he seemed unfazed as he continued onwards until the two reached a floor with a door off to the side.

“So, this is it. We went and shut the vents off and I got my crew stationed at all the other exits. It ain’t got no where else to go.” The gangster opened the door and Davidson could only see a faint, flickering light inside. The room was large and filled with unopened crates among the ventilation systems. A pungent odor struck his nose and the unique feeling of rotten egg coated daggers being rammed into his nostrils immediately gave away that the product in the crates was freshly made Zig.

“Did the hard part for me huh, thanks mate.” Davidson gave the thug a wink and a nudge as he walked inside. “Stay on the other side of the door and block it in case it tries to get out. I’ll do two slow knocks, then three fast ones to indicate that its me knocking when I’m done, got it?’

“Yeah okay tough guy, just get in there and clip the dumb bastard.” The gangster slammed the door shut, tired of the fat man in front of him wasting his time.

“Man, how funny would it be if this was just an elaborate kidnapping.” Davidson nervously laughed to himself and moved closer into the room, placing his transport case onto the ground.

The area was darker than other parts of the building, the sole flickering light in the room began to irritate Davidson like a torture room. Most of the area was covered in bulky and complicated ventilation systems. A vent that ran along the back wall was visible. It was connected to a large box shaped object that itself had vents running and connecting to other machines.

Davidson walked up to the object and looked around for any openings he could see. Spotting one on the other side, he reached out to open it only to find he couldn't, seemed the vent was rusted shut. Davidson kicked the object and heard a quiet sound of shuffling behind him in another one of the vents. He approached it as quietly as his feet were able, placing his feet heel first before resting the rest of it down gently. He leaned down and placed his ear as close as he could without touching the vent itself. To his surprise, he heard the sounds of chattering metal within the vent. It would seem Davidson had found his target, staying still in one location. Slowly moving away from it, he followed the path this vent followed and traced it into another machine, with another opening. Davidson was able to open this vent, doing so while holding his breath to prevent the model one from hearing it.

Davidson had hatched a scheme to get the robot out of the vent system. He moved back to where the robot was hiding, lifting his foot up to the vent. Davidson took several deep breaths as he prepared himself to execute his plan. With a final deep breath, he kicked the vent in the same manner as the gangster. Immediately he heard the model one panic inside the vent, it was caught off guard and he could hear it moving inside. Davidson ran over to the opened vent and heard the model one shuffling over to the object, trying to get away from him. He kept his eyes on the opening and as the sounds approached it he kept his hand opened and at the ready. As the sounds entered the machine, he could hear it’s confused movements as it attempted to find a way out. Davidson saw a radio antenna poke out of the opening and he quickly reached his hand inside the machine. 

He caught the model one android by the neck and yanked on it without care. He bent the opening a bit and could feel it getting scrapped as he hoisted it out. He couldn’t hold on as it fell out of the vent and the android scurried back once it was able to get on its feet again. The robot looked at Davidson with a shuffling expression between sadness and surprise, it’s motors being so much more limited than the model twos. The robot had a large round head with no hair and wasn’t wearing any clothes. It’s joints were obvious round spheres with its upper and lower halves being joined via a connector. “It’s done model one, there’s no getting out of this one. Don’t make this hard.” Davidson could see the robot’s expression turn sour at the sound of his voice.

“I didn’t want to…” The robot seemed to be lost in thought.

“I know. But you all did, there are no exceptions. It’s a shitty consolation prize, but I won’t pick your brain apart like Sterling. It’ll be quick and painless, I promise.” Davidson took out his wrangler rod and switched it on, a line of electricity went straight through the rods and up through the device, electrifying it. “I know you won’t surrender, but your parts will go to a good place, I’ll make sure of that.”

The two stood in silence, Davidson knew the model one wouldn’t come quietly, they never did. But he always hoped he would find one who wouldn't put up a fight. He noticed the subtle movements of the model one as it slightly moved its feet apart, one in front of the other. It was going to attack him. Like every other Sterling made model one android, it was an outmode. It could freely break laws and do as it pleased, and after that day, it abandoned its owner like all the rest. They fled into what ever hiding place they could find. Some hid in sewers, some hid in abandoned buildings. This one hid in a drug den, and now that Davidson found it, it had no where else to hide. Davidson could see under its face of anger, however basic, was a thin layer of disgust with him. He couldn’t do anything but agree with it…

The robot kicked off the vent behind him and sped towards Davidson. He wasn’t expecting such speed and the android clocked a solid hit towards Davidson’s jaw. He was stunned and failed to notice the follow-up strike aimed at his chest. The robot tried to follow through as Davidson fell back, trying to catch his breath. But, he was able to bob his head and avoid the right hook heading for his glasses. The android was too close to get a good enough lock with the rod. Davidson attempted to shove it back but it caught itself on the vent and launched itself back at him. It used the speed to force a kick at Davidson’s knee, causing him to fall back onto it. The android walked up him and attempted a wide haymaker going for Davidson’s head. It was shocked as Davidson suddenly fell onto both knees, causing it to punch the machine behind him, leaving a large dent. As it retracted its arm to line up another hit, Davidson caught it and lifted it above his own head, getting back onto one knee as he did so. He noticed an opening and swung the wrangler rod with all the strength he had. As the rod collided with the android’s torso it bent at the point of impact. Davidson let go of the android’s hand as the rest of the rectangles wrapped around the model one and began to spark after forming a loop. The android’s eyes lit up in horror and let out a loud metallic scream, it warping as its vocal systems struggled to process the tone. Davidson could barely see, but felt the android struggle in vain to free itself. It finally went completely limp as it burnt out, falling to the ground. All of it’s internal electrical systems were destroyed, its brain completely fried. For all intents and purposes, Davidson had just murdered it.

He too fell to the floor, unwrapping and putting away his wrangler rod, the charge in it used. He still felt pain in his jaw and chest. After catching his breath, he could only stare at the now smoking android. Davidson was once again the victor, but he only felt a sense of guilt over destroying such technology. He wouldn’t be able to get half of what it was originally worth. But, it was better than the thoughtless destruction it would have received with Sterling Robotics. With him, he could salvage what he could and give it some use. It would be best if they didn’t have to destroy Sterling model one androids. But the law made its decision, and Davidson couldn’t risk having everyone down on his head for harboring one. The model two nandroids he had was attracting enough attention from the company.

Davidson eventually rose to his feet and picked up the now dead machine. He placed it into his transport suitcase and knocked on the door to the stairway before opening it. The gangster had disappeared and was no longer in front of the door. Davidson looked down stairs and couldn’t see a single soul. “The hell is going on now.” he thought, running all the way back downstairs.

As he returned to ground level, he looked out into the plaza he walked through when he arrived. He saw his client now surrounded by his ‘boys’, another group of people on the opposite side. “You better take your ass home Frankie, you got no business bein’ here” he said, flipping off the other group, much to their displeasure.

Davidson’s alarm bells went off like the fourth of July, he wasted no time in walking out and around the plaza, avoiding the two crowds arguing and heading out through another entrance. He circled the building and got to his truck, throwing his stuff into the back as he had no intention of getting dragged into whatever was about to happen. The plaza now echoed with loud screaming and swears aplenty. Davidson paying it no mind as he got into his truck and sped off without looking back. “Note to self,” he thought, “never accept work from the mob again.” He laughed, heading onto the main road and driving straight home to complete the rest of his tasks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	9. Quite The Scare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realizing when you're being an ass is a lesson few learn, fewer remember, and fewest admit needing to learn at all.

Davidson entered the house with a sense of vigor. He plopped the transport suitcase next to the door and shut it as quickly as he opened it. He wasted no time in walking over to the nandroid on the table and plugged her back into his computer, no funny glitches or anything occurring. He ensured his mic was in the right spot and began recording another assessment log. He noted how the nandroid was found by some office geek in the alleyway of his workplace. The nandroid was barely scratched and most of the wiring was intact, but Davidson couldn’t get it to turn on. He suspected there may be a loose wire and rated the nandroid as a class ‘A’. A nandroid that barely needed any fixing and could be sold in a matter of minutes if he wanted to. He checked the time and decided to do that now while he had the chance. He moved the mic away, unplugged the nandroid, and got his usual toolset out to conduct the repairs. “Finally I can finish this, wasted all morning.” He said, seemingly forgetting his prior commitment to Lulu.

As he turned the overhead light on and began inspecting wires, she quietly emerged from the hallway, having recently finished some of her chores that he instructed her to complete. “You’re back so soon sire, welcome home.”

“Hmm? Oh hey Lulu, finishing up the bathroom?” Davidson didn’t look at her as he continued his work.

“The bathroom is… um, it’s finished sire. As are the dishes.” Lulu stared at the man’s back, a common sight this past week as he concentrated on his work. “Sire… I was wondering…”

Davidson took a wire and traced it along the torso. “Huh, that ain’t right, or is it…”

“I… well, with it being the weekend and all. I wanted to ask if we could… well if we could properly sit down for once. Maybe start setting things up for… us?” Lulu clasped her hands together with a bright smile, hoping this direct questioning would finally get his attention.

“Yeah, sure… uh… maybe in a bit, nearly done with this. Hmm. That wire is connected to the power supply but not connected to the resistor… now why is that…” Lulu’s smile was dashed, replaced with a saddened look as she lowered her head and arms.

“But sire… it’s been a week and we’ve never really… talked. I don’t know what I should be doing or… how to do things right here in such a strange place.” Lulu turned around and moved to grab a duster for the garage after Davidson was done. “I just… sometimes wonder why I’m here. Or why you decided to keep me?” Davidson didn’t response and continued to work on the nandroid.

“L~~~et’s see here.” Davidson moved some wires out of the way and found a loose one buried in the pile. “Ah here we go! The primary power isn’t being regulated! No wonder it can’t fully boot.” Davidson ignored Lulu’s pleas and took his pliers, using them to plug the wire back into its proper place. The nanosecond Davidson make contact with the point a large series of sparks shot out from every electrical circuit in the nandroid. The arms and legs violently seized up, hitting Davidson square in the jaw. The nandroid collapsed on the table, its eyes dark and unmoving. The wire caused a complete core burnout, short circuiting the nandroid’s power supply and positronic brain, destroying them both. Every internal component and chip was fried and it’s eye opticals were over charged, causing them to break. It was a great many days since the last time this had happened, and it was as horrific as the last time. Davidson couldn’t understand why this happened, he knew every wire and couldn’t figure out why that wire in particular would cause a burnout. The nandroid went from a class ‘A’ to class ‘F’, a barely salvageable mess that was worth next to no money.

Davidson chucked his tool across the garage room and slammed his fist into the cabinet, all the tools inside rustling and making a lot of noise. “Shit!” Davidson yelled out. “How!? How did THAT happen!? Who the hell wired this thing!?”

When all went quiet, Davidson could hear the sounds of sputtering motors behind him. He was snapped out of his angry self-deprecation and looked to see Lulu shivering uncontrollably and whimpering, a look of terror accompanying it. His face grew more regretful the longer he stared at her. The nandroid shorting out must have scared her, but his episode of anger is what horrified her. He saw behind her and noticed the full pot of coffee he blatantly ignored this morning. He felt like he had just been drop kicked by the realization of what he had done all week. He lightly tapped the desk with his fingers and took a deep breath, staring out of the nearest window.

“Lulu… I’m doing it again aren’t I.” Davidson felt like a cretin, it was only now he realized how he had neglected what could very well be his most important case. “It’s been a whole week hasn’t it. Heh, to me it’s only felt like three days. Time just can’t slow down anymore can it.” He walked into the kitchen to talk to her and apologize but she had shuffled back when he tried to approach her. “Yeah. I understand. I’d do the same thing to. I’d like to tell you that I’m some sweet gentlemen who doesn’t get upset, but I won’t lie to you like that. I wanted to sit down with you and set everything up but… well I always need money and work is always available. We were only able to get the stove fixed at all cause I had so many retrievals that paid this week and I sold all those nandroids. I kept you because, well because there’s something different about you.”

Lulu had her arms crossed and was rubbing one of them to help calm herself, still shivering as every negative feeling and memory came flooding back to her. “What does that mean?”

“When I first fixed you I ran some tests and… they produced results I wasn’t expecting. Your mind is a black box, but I can gleem SOME insights into it and…”

Lulu started talking before he could finish, her voice filled with confusion and desperation. “Is there something wrong with me? Am I broken? What do you mean ‘different’? Am… oh god am I an outmode?”

Davidson motioned downwards with his hands to calm her quickening fake breath. “No, no of course not! At least, I don’t think so. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I agreed to keep you. I want to figure it out. I honestly can’t tell what’s happened but I want to help you. I meant it when I said that Lulu…” Davidson felt himself getting ensnared again. He lowered his head from the weight of guilt at starting this off on such a bad foot. “I never thought I’d ask a robot this but… I’ve been ass this entire time and you didn’t deserve a single moment of it. Would you forgive me? For scaring you like this?”

Lulu’s face widened at the question. Nothing at school covered this, her human owner asked her for forgiveness. She didn’t know how to respond at first, her processes overclocking themselves to consider it. This odd man seemed like he was genuine. He was the only person who ever asked for forgiveness from her. “Sire… I forgive you but… please… never do that again, alright? It’s really just too much for me… please…”

Davidson rose his head with a faint smile. “Okay then, sure. I’ll never scare you like this, ever again. Ever.” He looked over to his schedule for the day hanging on the kitchen wall and saw he had client work, repairs, and visits he needed to do. He proceeded to dropped it into the nearby trash can. “Oh, well look at that, I guess my schedule cleared up for the day.”

“Is that really alright sire?”

“Yup, comon, I’ve put this off for long enough.” Davidson took the destroyed nandroid and dropped it into the disposal bin outside. He ensured Lulu didn’t see him as he felt like a bumbling idiot. “And here I thought I wouldn’t do this again after Haley. Shit. Guess it’s time to finally ‘grow up’ huh.” He walked back into the house to finally conduct a secondary assessment on Lulu, hoping to dig a little deeper into what was happening with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	10. Sneak Peek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lulu and Davidson learn more about each other.
> 
> Some of it is good.

“You’re doin’ great Lulu, keep your ponytail held up, I’m almost done.” Davidson took his pliers and gripped the wire, taking another hit from his cigarette. He carefully brought it over to the glowing sphere and inserted it into one of the many openings. “There we go, did that hurt at all?”

“Oh no not at all sire… but can it?” the nandroid was worried and sitting on the operating table, legs crossed. Davidson noted her anxiety spiking when asked to lay down and she refused to sit in the table’s chair configuration outright. Her head’s back panel was taken off and Davidson had plugged a series of wires into her positronic mind. The wires led back to an old machine that was plugged into Davidson’s equally old computer.

“Nah, chances are non existent, just making sure.” Lulu tilted her head down as her vent cheeks began to glow a dim red, a smile had manage to appear over her usual nervous demeanor. Never in her existence was this much attention paid to her well being. The feeling of comfort and happiness was one she sorely missed. She was able to ‘breathe’ normally with her cooling systems and for once she could just be.

“Sire… if you don’t mind me asking of course. How do you know so much? About us? How did you get all this?” Davidson moved Lulu’s head and got a better angle to plug one of the wires.

“Well… that’s a story and a half. I guess I’ll start where most people start caring about your existence. I graduated from CSU with a Computer Science degree. Most of my peers wanted to focus on making computers better but I was attracted towards Hardware-Software interfaces.”

“Hardware-Software interfaces?” Lulu looked confused.

“Yup, see they teach you all about potato famines to impress idiotic dinner guests but nothing actually interesting. It’s basically like this wire here.” Davidson moved in front of the chair and showed Lulu the wire, pointing to the tip. “This wire carries electricity right? All the wires inside you do.” Davidson gently placed his hand onto Lulu’s and lifted it as she tried to stifle her embarrassment. She certainly hadn’t experienced contact like this in a very long time. She was reminded of last week when Davidson tried to soothe her by touching her head. “See, when I place my hand onto yours you can ‘feel’ it in a sense right? But that’s just electrical signals, on or off, ones and zeroes, et cetera.”

“I~~… yes sire, I-I believe I understand.” Davidson took his hand off as Lulu felt it’s presence fade. She felt her mind get a little fuzzy, both over whatever Davidson was discussing and over these odd feelings in her.

“So whenever your shell comes into contact with something, a combination of sensors and wires sends their signals to your brain. Hardware-Software interfacing is about coding your mind to recognize and interpret these signals. It’s about communication.” Davidson returned to the back of the chair and tried to grab another wire with his pliers

“So… my mind is interpreting the wires based on which ones have electricity in them?” Lulu traced a shape in her palm as she pondered the feeling it produced.

“In a sense, yes. Humans are similar, ‘cept we use organic tissue.” He noted, plugging another wire into an opened port. “I found getting these things to talk to one another such a… well such a humble little problem to fix. But it turned out to be such a pain sometimes. After I graduated I was lucky enough to continue working on these interfaces and was able to make it my career.”

“Sire… did you create us?”

Davidson was silent as he placed the final wire into the brain. Walking around to his desk, he chuckled at Lulu. He could see her body as the overhead lamp gleamed on her, nearly feeling like that young kid many years ago. “Pretty observant huh? Yeah, I played my part in creating you. Nandroids I mean… I and a whole bunch of other people.”

“Sire I’m honored!” Lulu’s excitement was palpable, Davidson actually let a smile escape as the nandroid sat in amazement after realizing who was in front of her. “Oh I didn’t know I was picked up by a creator! Did you work with John Sterling? How was he? Was he great? He was great wasn’t he?”

“Yes I did get to meet John, although… well never mind. I actually didn’t start at Sterling Robotics but got hired for some contract work with ‘that which shall not be named’. Which is to say, Volkman.”

“Oh how awful sire.”

“You shouldn’t believe what everyone tells you. They’re Sterling’s main competitor for a reason after all. After I had been with them for ‘bout two years we started hearing rumors that Sterling was developing something big. My team ran into a Sterling representative at some conference and naturally I’m interested in what Sterling has cookin’ and built rapport with the guy. I found myself entering the front doors of Sterling’s development labs a year later.” Davidson was typing away at his computer after finishing wiring Lulu to the nearby logging device.

“What was it that Sterling was making at the time sire?” Davidson only turned around and cheekily tapped his forehead before returning to his monitor. “Oh I see… that’s why they wanted someone like you. To figure out how to get it to communicate with our other components.”

“Exactly, there was about five of us back then. That was just the hardware-software team of course, there were many teams, most of them bigger than ours.” Davidson finished his keystrokes and had entered the command, a long series of characters printed out to the monitor that Lulu couldn’t quite make out.

“So… what happened? Why did you make N.R.A.I if you had a job at Sterling?” Davidson froze for a brief moment, taking a deep breath and seemingly lost in his head as Lulu waited for the answer.

“Just some unfortunate things Lulu. I ended up leaving Sterling on the same day the first model twos were being shipped from the company warehouse.” Davidson looked downtrodden, Lulu could easily tell it was more than just that. She felt an intense sense of melancholy from Davidson as he stared at the monitor. He was doing that weird thing she sometimes saw humans do, where they look at something but you can tell they are really looking into their own mind.

“Does it still bother you? Whatever it is?” Davidson didn’t answer, still lost in thought.

“Well, I am happy here...” Davidson came back to reality as he turned his attention back to Lulu. “I work on fixin’ you guys up, I retrieve nandroids and help you get back to families or find new ones… I’m doing better work here than at Sterling or Volkman.” Davidson returned to his monitor as Lulu became confused. His statement had an air of being a lie she couldn’t fully discern. Was it a lie he believed was true, or a lie he wanted to be true? Davidson looked at the scrolling characters on his monitor and smiled before shaking his head. “Confused are you? Yeah I’m really not surprised. I confuse myself most days.”

A tiny ‘eep’ sound escape Lulu’s mouth as her cheeks glowed a deep red and she put her hands to her face in embarrassment. “I-I didn’t mean to… well I…”

“It’s alright, you wondered how I knew that right?” Davidson pointed to his computer as the machine next to it was also showing charts and matrices. “Your mind can be partially read via this machine. Well it’s more like your current state really, your emotional matrix or~~~ hmm... the current emotion you’re feeling rather.”

“You can’t read my mind?” Lulu felt a sense of relief at this, the idea of someone poking around in her memories not being the most pleasant thing she could think of.

“No not exactly, only incredibly specialized Sterling readers can do that. I only know of three places where they have them and one of them is somewhere I shouldn’t even know exists. The other is in the R&D labs, with the third being privately owned. I can only get a limited read out with what I have here. Just plugging you into the computer gives me a basic look at you, this machine gives me more detailed info. It was a gift from some coot I often sell nandroids to and it basically lets me ensure your mind is functioning properly which… well it seems to be. Can you compute two plus two in your mind for me? No need to speak it.” Davidson studied the logs as Lulu did as he requested, not seeing anything out of place. What confused him was how Lulu could have nearly failed Tobias’ test while passing all of his own. Lulu seemed fully cognitive, aware of reality, and not displaying errors of any kind. “Huh, how odd.” he mused.

“What? What’s the matter?” Lulu began to squirm and fidget on the table.

“Well… from what I’m seeing here your cognitive processes and emotional responses are all in line. I thought they would at least look a LITTLE like the night I found you but… I dunno, according to what I’m seeing now you’re doing well. Mentally I mean.” Davidson adjusted some knobs and switches on the device, looking back at the monitor to see if any changes were noticeable.

“Well that would be a good thing right?”

“Sure. But I didn’t expect a recovery like this.” Davidson looked between his computer and Lulu with an increasing sense of suspicion. When a nandroid suffers damage they are expected to take time for their AI learning to integrate the event and move on. But Lulu did it in a week, which was a miraculous recovery. Something wasn’t adding up. With the additional information on hand, her emotional matrices were aligned with the correct response types. No optical hallucinations were happening. No memory overflow or falsifications were detected. No disloyal infections or outmode lawbreaking could be found at all. “Well if what I’m seeing here is correct, then… there isn’t anything wrong with you. That is to say, there isn’t any active problems we need to fix.”

Lulu clapped her hands together and ecstatically hopped off the table. “This is great news sire! I can’t wait to get these wires out of my head. If there’s nothing wrong then we can just spend the day together yes?”

Davidson sat in silence as he saw how quick Lulu jumped off the table asking to remove all the wires. He studied her smiling face and noticed it was as genuine as can be. But there was something, something about her eyes. The way the different colored optics quickly shuffled around the room, how they always remained these small irises at all times. In fact, Davidson never saw her eyes at any different size all week. Her damaged and cracked face holding an air of anxiety as her eyes seemed like they would snap at any time. She was smiling, but one would hardly call her a calm happy little nandroid. Davidson read the readouts again, a nandroid who looked like her would never have readouts this positive.

“Lulu, are you feeling okay?” Davidson asked, keeping his eyes focused onto the computers

“Okay? Of course sire! Could you please remove the wires? We wouldn’t want to waste another day before the two of us could properly go through an orientation process right?”

As soon as Lulu questioned whether she was okay, Davidson saw it. A tiny spike in the readouts, something he couldn’t see on a basic checkup. Not one of confusion, but of anxiety. “Lulu…” Davidson was about to ask an insane question, one that was unprecedented. If she was… the readouts would catch it, right? But he took all the suspicions, all the oddities, and rolled them into one conclusion. “Are you lying to me?”

Lulu’s expression didn’t move an inch, but neither did any other part of her body. Davidson turned around in his chair and was paying attention to every part of her shell. “What was that sire?”

“I said. Are you lying to me right now.” Lulu let out a chuckle and looked away from Davidson, her smile only growing.

“Oh no sire I would never! Heh, what a silly thing for a human to ask. Nandroid’s are incapable of lying.”

“Except you just did, because they told you in school that you could to children. So how did you just do it to me, your owner?” Lulu’s smile was flipped in a heartbeat. Her eyes only grew smaller as she realized Davidson knew about their training regiment.

“Sire please, I-I’m not lying, why would you accuse me of that?” Davidson saw more fluctuations on the monitor behind him before they were stifled back to normal. Davidson got up from his chair in disbelief, 

“Holy shit… how are you doing that? None of you should be able to fool this machine.”

Lulu had her hands against her chest, she was breathing rapidly. Her eyes slowly losing focus and drifting away. “I… I…”

“Lulu you realize you’re doing something that should be impossible right? Why? Does it… does it have something to do with why you were dumped?” At the utterance of his questions Lulu seized up as her eyes gave a thousand yard stare. Her mouth hung ajar as Davidson heard bizarre noises coming from his computer, like his speakers were overloading. As he turned around he saw the readouts full of corrupted data and unintelligible strings of characters, there was nothing he could read. He felt his spine grow cold as all the technology around him stopped responding. His computer, Lulu, and the reader were all caught in one singular trap that he could neither interpret nor fix. “Lulu, Lulu! Snap out of it!” Davidson shook Lulu, trying to jolt her from whatever bizarre incident she was experiencing. His attempts were in vain as the noise from his computer grew worse and louder. The corrupted characters getting more scattered and incomprehensible as they flew by the screen faster and faster. Davidson was helpless as he didn’t want to risk damaging her mind by ripping the wires out of it, desperately trying to wrangle control back from his computer. 

“Shit.” was all he could mutter, grabbing Lulu by the shoulders and trying to get her eyes to focus on him. “Lulu, it’s Davidson. Can you hear me? Everything is all right, you’re gonna be okay.” He attempted to reach into her head through the open panel. He felt around for a button near her mind and he held it down as the noise only grew more distorted. He only hoped she would come out of it still in one piece. He cursed himself for what he had done all week, allowing his work to interfere with doing what he said he would, helping her. He again failed to recognize the paradoxical nature of his mind. It’s a machine Davidson. He felt sick. But all he could do was stand in place hoping to god it would end soon. 

The readout machine popped as more components blew out. The noise became deafening before a final pop was heard. Suddenly, everything was a quiet as can be. All the power in Davidson’s house had gone out. The machine stopped, the monitor was still, and Lulu stayed exactly where she was. After a while, he could only hear the sounds of sobbing. Although Lulu could not cry, she was overwhelmed, she hugged Davidson tightly in her fear. Davidson was still rattled by the experience. It finally occurred to him that this nandroid was a case he couldn’t handle by himself.

“S-Sire. W-W-What’s wrong w-with me? Why d-do I feel like this? I feel so anxious and alone...” Davidson couldn’t answer at first. The statements coming at him like a kindred spirit. The two eventually separated with Lulu holding onto one of her arms, her glowing red cheeks lighting her face.

“Are… you feeling better?”

“A… a little bit.”

“That’s good at least.”

“What… are we gonna do?”

“This problem is beyond my help, I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with you. But I have a plan. I’m taking you to see someone, someone I haven’t visited in a very, very, long time.” Davidson walked into his kitchen and checked if the phone was out as well. He couldn’t even hear a dial tone. “Well, guess we’ll just have to drop in.”

“Who are you taking me too?” Lulu asked, Davidson grabbing a small case and inserting it into a slot on his computer. He took the case back out, a disk visible in the inside of it.

“Someone who mentored me, who use to work with Sterling himself…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	11. Father Of The Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Davidson not able to understand her issues, he takes Lulu to see an old dear friend.

The old man was resting in his chair as he was deeply entranced by the book in front of him. The nandroids behind him were conducting a sweet symphony of sound that echoed throughout the large room he was in. He was wearing his favorite comfort robe as the other nandroids tended to his shoulders, feet, and every aching muscle. Yup, safe to say, his day was going well. But today was a rare day, a day in where this serene scene had a rather large stake driven through it. But to him, that was possibly the best thing that could have happened.

“I’m very sorry to interrupt sir but we have a rather rude visitor insisting to see you. Shall I call the police?” The man took a deep breath and closed his book, brushing away the other nandroids and putting his slippers back on.

“Well now. It’s about time isn’t it? I was beginning to think he would never come back. Then again, he probably needs another favor I reckon eh?” Some of the other nandroids began to giggle and talk amongst themselves as he left his abode and walked through the grand empty halls that comprised his estate.

His nandroid opened the front door and escorted him out to the front of the mansion. He could see a man and a nandroid standing just beyond the front gate arguing with one of his many caretakers. “Look I know the guy is real busy sitting in his chair and drinking his fancy wine but can you just fucking tell him David’s here? I got something he needs to see.”

The nandroid next to him was looking around rather nervously as he raised his voice. “Sire, language. The neighbors could hear.”

He only smiled as he remembered the old friend standing in front of him. He was relieved to see him safe and not looking too much worse than the last time he saw him. “Go ahead and let them in.”

“S-Sir, are you sure about that? He is behaving most unruly and could be dangerous.” The nandroid looked concerned as she stepped in front of him with a hand resting on her bosom.

“Don’t let his rudeness get to you. He’s a dear friend. It’ll be alright.” It took a second, but the nandroid nodded and walked over to the other and opened the gate.

Davidson ignored the nandroids and stepped onto the grounds, spotting his friend awaiting him by the front door. “Well lookie you Kry! Still livin’ it up in these boring hills with the rest of the retired geniuses!”

“Eyup. Still enjoying the good life.” The two embraced and patted each other on the back as they reunited. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten an old crow like myself, it’s good to see you again David.”

“I nearly did with how the city’s been lately. Can you believe the freaking mob of all people called me? I half expect John to give me a ring someday.” He motioned for Lulu to come closer and moved her over to the man. “Kry this nandroid is the reason I’m here today.”

He waited in silence as he stared at Davidson, waiting for an introduction that would never come. He nodded and took one of his hands out of his pockets, offering to shake Lulu’s hands. Lulu was taken aback as Davidson looked at the two puzzled. She slowly met his hand with her own as he began to speak. “Forgive him dear he… well, never mind. My name is Michael Kryo. I use to work with John Sterling.”

“Oh!” Lulu suddenly piqued up, “The sire mentioned that, but you appear to be nearly as old as the creator himself. Forgive me, I was expecting someone younger. My name is Lulu”

Michael could only laugh at the insinuation, feeling humbled and intrigued. “After all these years you still say the darnedest things, catches me off guard sometimes.”

“S-Sorry. I don’t quite understand?”

“Lulu,” Davidson interjected, “Michael designed, engineered, and built the positronic brain you’re all using.”

“Ah yes. Me and many, many, other people. The advances in technology we made were integrated into the ‘Robots of the Future’. The future being the present of course. Back then it was a pipe dream but we eventually got there. Heh, now they power the latest androids, including you little one. Here, let’s get you two inside and out of this dreadful heat.” The two nandroids escorted the group into the mansion, Lulu looking at all the furnishings and decorations. “Now I imagine you’re not here for me to give you a conjugal. What do you need David?”

“A what? Anyway, I need you to have a look at Lulu here.“

“Oh? What seems to be the problem?” Davidson didn’t want to get into details around Lulu, not wanting to trigger another episode.

“Just some uh.. couple possible I/O related things I guess.” Michael looked at Davidson’s lie straight through his face. Davidson wasn’t one to mince words, but he knew his one weakness. He decided to play along for now, believing he had good intentions.

“Well then, let’s get her to the lab I guess.”

“T-The lab?” Lulu’s breathing got heavier as Michael caught the phenomenon.

“No no dear not to worry. My lab is one of the most advanced around outside of Sterling R&D. We’ll just plug you straight in and take a look at you. It’s the easiest process in the world. Certainly not using twenty wires plugged into your head in a damp dungeon.”

Michael’s reference caused Lulu to titter and smile. “O-Okay then. I really hope you can help me Mr. Kryo.” Michael placed his hands on Lulu’s shoulders.

“Don’t give it another thought, you’ve come to the perfect place. Now let’s get you seated.” The three walked through the vast halls of Michael’s estate, Lulu saw nandroids left and right in the various rooms they walked past. Some were conversing, others were practicing their dancing and playing the most wondrous of music. But she saw nandroids writing in diaries and standing around a flower taking notes. A collection of nandroids this large intrigued her, what was the purpose of such things? There were no children with them, no one was performing their function. They all belonged to this singular man. Were they like her? Or something else?

“Mr Kryo. What are these nandroids doing here?” Lulu queried, seeing some of them staring at her and whispering things to each other.

“Well,” Michael started, “I could explain it but that wouldn’t be interesting.” He looked back at the two escorts. “Would you mind girls?”

“Oh! I got it!” One of them exclaimed, “We’re reparations!”

“I thought we were a bribe…” The other had a finger on her lip.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Michael asked, “Given the same information, no two minds will process it the same, they have different interpretations and thus, different answers. Now, Lulu, what if I told you that at some point in the past Sterling Robotics pulled me aside and told me that because of those unforeseen incidents we dealt with, they would honor my retirement with a suite of top quality nandroids mailed periodically to act as my caretakers. Of course, they also said that I had to take no sides in any past, current, and future court cases raised against, or in favor of, Sterling Robotics. What are they?”

Lulu paused as she considered it. One of the nandroid’s answers pointed to reparations, meaning Michael was affected by whatever those incidents were and Sterling was apologizing and making things right. It fell in line with what she thought of the company, caring about its employees and ensuring they were okay, not to mention taking care of one of their most important people well beyond his service. The other was a more cynical approach. It required a bit of analysis and not taking the surface image for what it was. The ending statement implied a condition in order to receive the gift and thus, perhaps it wasn’t a gift at all. Perhaps they didn’t want Michael Kryo to say or do something in court. A guaranteed retirement being surrounded by creations, made real by your own contributions, to take care of you is a future many would sacrifice for. For Sterling to offer such a reward for silence in the law, it could be seen as a bribery. But Lulu thought more about what was told to her. It was not only for Michael to not go against Sterling but also to not help them. Could something he say affect Sterling negatively? Even though he meant to help them? For them to buy his complete and total silence and to remove him from the court system entirely spoke to a bribery. But to Lulu it spoke to something much more, something she could feel in her spine, a feeling of wanting to get out of whatever situation you were currently in by any means.

“Was it… an act of desperation?” The group arrived in front of a set of double doors, Michael smiling as Lulu contributed her answer.

“See?” Michael said. “Three different answers, all based on our own experiences and knowledge gained up until this point in time. Many people know our brain powers our bodies but they treat it as a storage unit. It holds our memories and thoughts for us to remember or lose. But it does much more than that. It can compare, it can synthesize, analyze our universe with what it can see, touch, hear. But the real moment of beauty occurs when you realize that it can consider that which none of our senses can detect. It can generate abstractions of what it cannot physically sense. The brain has its own methods for testing the world’s consistency and structure. In a sense, they are all right answers. But right in different ways. I accepted their offer not only cause I’m an old man now, but also because having a suite of nandroids watch over me in retirement was a grade A deal.”

Davidson was looking away and not paying attention when Michael launched into his lecture, as he finished, Davidson looked back and noticed the escorts were holding the doors open for him. “Oh, sorry. Kry always loves to launch into his mind spiels. You can get pretty good at tuning them out.”

“You’ll HAVE to get good at tuning _him_ out sometimes.” Lulu was perplexed at Michael’s negative statement towards his friend while the two escorts merely giggled to themselves. Davidson appeared as unamused as always. The room they entered was exquisitely white. Ceramic tiles comprised the floor as a wide variety of equipment was strewn all over the place. In the center was a comfy chair with a connector hanging nearby from a rather large computer. “Here we are, please take a seat right here and we’ll get you plugged in,”

Lulu and Davidson looked at the chair, Lulu especially looked nervous at the sight of it. “U-Um… If it’s alright with you Mr. Kryo I would rather stand.”

“Hmm. Well that’s no problem my dear. Girls, please get her plugged in. You’ll be in standby mode during the process Lulu so you won’t feel a thing while we’re seeing what the issue could be.” The escorts gently brushed aside Lulu’s tail and plugged the machine’s connector into her neck.

“I hope you can figure out what’s wrong Mr. Kryo. I’ve been worried for a long time.” she soon lost consciousness and remained standing on the floor.

“She’s ready sir.” One of the nandroids confirmed.

“Thank you girls, you two can go back to your usual routine. Me and David will handle it from here.” Davidson went up to a nearby monitor and waited for Michael to follow suit after the two nandroids left the room. Michael tried to recall a few commands and prepared the computer to mount Lulu's main drive and gain access to her head.

“Davidson. Now that it’s just us pals and we’re in a private facility. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on.” Davidson looked around to ensure they really were alone before leaning in closer to Michael, taking his M.C.E.D case and inserting it into the computer.

“Kry. It’s something I’ve never seen before. I don’t know where she came from or what happened to her. You see how nervous she looks all the time? The things she’s done since I’ve fixed her are unbelievable. This nandroid managed to fool my positronic reader. She directly lied to me, her primary registered owner, and then lied about that when I confronted her. I suspect she… Kry I think this nandroid might be a naturally occurring model two outmode.” Michael suddenly turned his head towards Davidson in shock. He thought he would be long dead before those words were ever uttered by a human being. To many such words were worthy of explicit panic.

“...What?” Was all he could say in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	12. Twin Diagnosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davidson and Michael investigate the oddities surrounding Lulu.
> 
> But she isn't the only patient being examined.

Outmodes. No gift is without cost and one cost begets ten more. For Davidson, they were the bane of his existence. The positronic brain was meant to be the answer to all their prayers. Everyone eagerly waited as the news proclaimed that the decades old idea was coming into fruition. But now, standing next to a chair not two feet from the two, was that idea forming cracks in its perfectly formulated plan.

“Davidson are you sure about this.” He took a sharp breath while giving a frustrated tap on the machine, walking away and cutting Michael off from talking.

“Kry this isn’t some stupid fuckin’ ‘haha look at the dumb man with his water cooler conspiracies’ bullshit! Look! Look!” Davidson brought up the logs from the night he found Lulu. “She-”

“David did you chec-”

“no shut up, look right here. Look!” Davidson began pointing out the readouts while Michael tried to calm him down to no avail. He uncorked something and knew it would be a minute before it would stop. “Right here! Look at these readouts, her mind is all over the damn place Kry! Then right here, this is what I got this morning. Look! See! Totally fine!”

“A nandroid’s positronic mind is capab-”

“Look at this spike! This, right here! That’s when I caught her lying. Look at how high the spike gets and then watch it when she stifles it. That’s not normal! You know that!” Davidson marched away from the monitor as Michael compared the two. This was always a scary reality for Davidson and it was one he brought up frequently to deaf ears. “Now they 'say' outmodes are caused by problems in the mind, by defects, by errors, or by damage. But her mind was not touched, at all. Tobias got his fat fuckin’ fingers on her and she still passed. My systems detected no issues. I’m telling you Kry, she broke her programming via the natural evolution of her mind, of her AI. Now can you please help me figure out SOMETHING because she can cause real big problems for everyone.”

Michael was in a deep state of contemplation. Davidson sighed and placed his hand on his shoulder to reassure his friend. “Kry I’m really sorry, this shouldn’t have happened in your lifetime, but it did. I didn’t want you to know, I didn’t want anyone too. But I am out of options on this one.”

Michael looked over to Lulu as she stood in standby mode. He walked over to her and gently rubbed her cheek. “Well then… let’s figure this out then shall we?” The pair smiled at each other as Michael was secretly very excited to explore this issue further. To him, this was an opportunity, one that he had been waiting for ever since his graduate days. “Tell me everything.” He stated.

“Well a week ago I picked her up from a dumpster, took her home then did my usual assessments which gave you this set of logs. The other ones were from this morning like I said. I was just gonna sell her like the rest but she had an episode when I first powered her. I wanted to observe her, so I kept her. Well, she also asked to stay I guess. Work kept getting in the way though so I never could. When I finally made some time to get another reading her logs were abnormal. I suspected she was lying to me so I asked, that caused this spike here and you can see how it sorta gets dragged back to expected tolerances. Now the tell was that her eyes and face looked like she was about to start panicking. Her ‘breathing’ got a lot faster and she started stuttering. When I confronted her about it… Well this happened.” Davidson brought up the corrupted data that Lulu wrote out, Michael eyes grew larger as he began to shift through the data.

“My goodness… How’s the reader holding up from this?” Michael asked.

“Oh it’s fucked,” Davidson responded, “When she started doing this it eventually overloaded and shorted out. My computer emitted this weird noise and she remained totally still.”

“Totally still? What do you mean exactly?” Michael began to notice patterns in the corruption as familiar strings of code popped out in his eyes.

“Well it was like… it was like she fell down a tunnel or something, mentally speaking. She didn’t respond to anything and wouldn’t stop, like she had to process something and couldn’t do anything else until it was finished.”

“Did you do something to trigger it? What happened right before she froze?” Michael asked.

“Nothing really. Well, that’s not entirely true. When she started getting more nervous I asked if what she was doing had anything to do with how she ended up at the dumpster, she started as soon as I asked.”

“How was her condition when you found her? Was she damaged?” Davidson suddenly remembered a minor note from his initial assessment of Lulu, smacking himself on the forehead for forgetting it.

“Shit, I’m stupid, she suffered a lot of damaged but none of the critical systems were impacted. I… I noted in the logs that the damage might have been caused on purpose. As in, you know.” Michael nodded and shook his head in disappointment. He reached the end of the corrupted text, with the log file suddenly cutting off. “Yeah that, that’s when she short circuited the power to my house. I don’t even wanna get into how she managed that one. After that though she was fine, relatively speaking. We drove here right afterwards.”

“David, this pattern here, doesn’t this look familiar?” Davidson got a closer look and took a moment before remembering.

“That’s… That’s the header for a memory file isn’t it? I remember having to write some code that dealt with that. So… ” The realization dawned on both of them as Davidson realized his error of thinking the characters being outputted were corrupted. “Oh shit Kry, this isn’t corrupted data at all is it? Not all of it at least.”

“Well, if this is what I think it is, we can find the rest of it inside that mind, the date is right here.” Michael located the source file inside of Lulu’s connected brain. Manipulating data from something as sensitive as a positronic brain could be a dangerous affair. He opted to copy the data into his own machine and run another program to open it.

Davidson jumped as soon as the file opened, the two could only see a bizarre series of colors as a pair of incredibly bloodshot eyes were front and center. The eyes were not perfectly human, they slightly wobbled and were distorted. What appeared to be a fist careening towards the screen was seen next to them as the ‘body’ was a highly blurred mess of distorted and saturated shapes was shown. The two were baffled by what they were seeing. Memory files were perfect recreations of what the nandroid saw, but this was more along the line of human thought. It was an imperfect creation where some parts had little detail and others were exaggerated or interpreted differently.

“What the fuck is this… ” Davidson asked, the image sent chills across his body as he couldn’t comprehend how a simplistic robotic nanny was even capable of creating such horrid imagery.

“You’re metaphor of a tunnel may be more apt than you realize David. My god, I can’t believe the positronic brain generated this.” Michael added, also looking concerned that the invention he spent his life on was capable of what he was seeing now.

“Do you have any idea what’s causing this?” Davidson asked.

Michael was someone who had studied the human mind to aid in developing an artificial recreation of one. He knew that the medical community often talked about such symptoms and knew of the cause. The unbelievable portion was that his own invention was showing these signs and he couldn’t trace how it was happening. “David… Lulu is suffering from post-traumatic stress.”

Davidson’s face was not akin to a shock, or a scare. It was bemused confusion at Michael’s own assessment. “What? Heh, Michael. Really? I mean come on, does this look like a soldier to you? I didn’t know we were sending nannies to fight the war, and here I thought we might’ve actually been winning or something. Tell me, what type of weapons do they use. The M3 or are they Thompson gals?”

Michael couldn’t help but crack a smile as Davidson called him by his first name, “I would say M42 myself, with a colt on the side. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re lying right now.”

Davidson shivered when Michael called him out, you could practically see the needle strike him square in the nose as it shattered his joking facade. “What? Lying? About what? A joke? You can lie with a joke? Nonsense.”

“Davidson, I know you, better than most and maybe even yourself. I remember the old days, when you use to stare at them as they sprang to life and learned how to move their limbs. The innocent look they gave as they became amazed at their own finger, knowing that you and everyone else played a part as the circuitry started to live. Don’t joke and hide it like everyone else, you don’t think like that. You don’t. You’re a smart kid Davidson but you can’t help but lie. Was keeping her entirely business?” Davidson narrowed his brows and backed away from the two instinctively.

“What’s that suppose to mean? You accusing me of something?” His posture became defensive as he felt like a deep section of his mind was being probed. “I know their mind and what they’re capable of and they ain’t capable of this.”

“ **WRONG**!” Michael pointed directly at Davidson as his voice echoed throughout the halls of the lab. Davidson stood silent with his hands in his pockets as Michael’s eyes became lost. He could tell Michael was looking at memories long since past, from before the two had ever met. “You don’t know a damn thing about what they’re capable of, and what you do know you won’t admit. You know nothing David. But this, this is finally an opportunity.”

“An opportunity!? An opportunity for what Kry? For us all to get dragged back into court? You really wanna risk that? If they find out this happened your retirement is gone.”

“Fine, if she’s such a threat, destroy her then.” Michael picked up a nearby chair and tried to hand it to Davidson.

“Woah hey I never mentioned anything about that. I still wanna fix this and I think we can.” Michael felt the push and pull from Davidson’s actions and knew their source. It was enough to drive anyone nuts, but he was a patient man.

“David, either you admit they are what everyone says they are or you admit they are what you believe they can be. Pick one, right now. Help the robot or destroy the threat, it’s a choice you’re familiar with.” Again, he attempted to hand Davidson the chair. His eyes could only dart between Lulu, the chair, and Michael. He began to feel sick to his stomach and light headed. He was trapped with the infernal machine in front of him that pricked something he couldn’t explain. Michael’s words took him back to those days in the lab, watching them with gleeful joy. The weight on himself only grew in strength as he placed his hand on the chair and lowered it down to the floor. Michael gave him a hug as Davidson took a tired breath.

“I’m, yeah… I’m sorry Kry.” The two walked over and tapped Lulu’s hand as she started to awaken from her standby mode.

“I know David, I know. But if you wanna help, this isn’t going to be easy. This is going to be tiring and frustrating and confusing and a whole other lot of messy things. The process will be gradual and will take time, a lot of it. You think you can handle it?”

“Well…” Davidson began, “My job is to fix nandroids. I’ll give it what I got and a little bit more.”

“Easy to say David, but I trust you’ll do just that. Alright then,” Michael was overfilled with joy at Davidson’s decision. The potential of what they had was something he could talk for hours about. He felt like that young boy fresh out of college walking into the lab with John and the others. “Here’s how we’re gonna do this…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	13. Drawing The Playbook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having something of a plan is a good idea when it comes to the healing process.

“So~~~. You’re David’s latest find huh? How has he been? Still eating from fast-food joints and working all night?” Lulu was surrounded by other nandroids in one of Michael’s parlor rooms. The group were all sitting and laying on a very large circular cushion. She was crossing her arms, holding onto them for comfort with having to deal this much attention drawn to her. The others were so different from herself, something she noticed immediately. Carefree, laughing, and freely discussing their topics. She could see more of them with notebooks and pencils in their hands, what were they writing about? Some had various shades of blonde hair and some even had red. None of them had her dark black hair or mistakenly paired optics. Being the odd one out was awkward, she’d rather blend in and not speak. She was very thankful for her sire fixing her, but when none of the other nandroids had to look at a cracked face in the mirror. It drew forth an ire she couldn’t define, one she didn’t like feeling given the circumstances.

“U-Um, yes, fine, and n-no, and... yes.” Every word felt like an explosive charge was required to get her to speak. She didn’t want them to think she was weird or that she was rejecting them. She didn’t want to let the group down over something as dumb and simple as a casual conversation. Feeling like enough power was being wasted wondering what they were thinking based on her appearance.

“No more grease traps? He did it ladies!” One of the nandroids erupted. “You know the deal! You gotta do my chores for a month!” The others groaned as she celebrated her victory. “Hey I know you tried, but it wasn’t good enough it seems!”

“You… tried? You’ve been w-with the s-sire?” Lulu, based on what Davidson had told her, was rather confused.

“Well, not ‘with’ per say. He takes us to Mr. Kryo sometimes if we can’t be sold or if he notices something about us. ‘Course, we never expected him to take in one for himself. Let alone rename you to ‘Lulu’. What’s that from anyway? He take it from the newspaper comic?” They it seemed, were under the notion that a ‘y’ ending name was required as well.

Another nandroid came forward on the cushion and interjected. “Is it short for Lucy? That would be such a cute nickname!” Lulu was a bit thrown off at how casual everyone was. The prim, proper posture expected of them was missing. It felt weird but, comfortable, enjoyable even. Being in a place where perfect etiquette was not demanded, where appearances were not constructed but shown. It felt good.

“Well… that’s the name w-we chose. I mean… thinking about it, do all of your names really end in a y?” The entire group nodded in unison.

“Sure! My name is Patsy for instance.” The original nandroid said, pointing at others in the room that were not involved in their conversation and naming them off in turn. “That one over there is Bailey, the one next to her is Patty. She’s Sammy, and those three are Everly, Ashly, and Ivy.” Patsy nudged Lulu and leaned in closer, speaking at a lower volume. “ ** _She’s_** the famous one.”

“Ain’t that right Ivy! You Hollywood starlet you!” A nandroid behind them teased. This caught her attention as she looked at the group with a grin and a laugh.

“What? Oh, come on, it wasn’t anything big. I just waited for the call and then wiped a child’s mouth. We didn’t even need a second take. It was shot ten miles from here.” The group continued to tease as she playfully ignored them and returned to her conversation.

“Oh but enough about us! What about you? Tell us about yourself!” What made for polite conversation shifted into negativity, and all it took was for the focus to shift to her.

“Oh me? Well uh, there isn’t much to tell. I’m just one of you!” The following laugh from her was weak, her stutter gone in a rush to end the topic. It worked on no one.

“David has dealt with hundreds of us. Yet he’s only ever kept you. Why do you think that is?” The question pricked something that lingered in the back of her mind. A lingering doubt she festered.

“I…” Lulu tried to stifle her true feelings in front of everyone, coming out with a non-threatening sense of neutrality. “I-I don’t know. He says he wants to help me but sometimes it feels like he’s looking through me or maybe, past me? Into me? It’s hard to keep his attention for long.” The group let out a series of affirming sounds and nods.

“Yeah that guy spaces out, a lot. He’s the only one I’ve seen live in his own head for free.” Patsy confirmed what Lulu suspected, feeling a sense of relief she wasn’t the only one to notice. “I wonder what goes on in there, apart from clouds that is. Still I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Michael’s the best outside of Sterling, they’ll take care of you.” Patsy placed her hands on Lulu as the others reassured her that she was in the best hands she could be. The image of when Davidson slammed his desk in front of her flashed past her mind long enough to taint the words of her fellow nandroids. Did they know about this? About his temper? Is that even what that was? She could end all doubts by asking them, but that would mean asking them.

The two entered the room and observed Lulu as she mingled among the others. “Read it to me again Davidson. Once more for good luck.”

Michael could hear Davidson groan at his request. “Alrighty then Mr. Man here we go.” His annoyance at having gone over this list several times at this point was starting to grate on his nerves. “Number one, I must check in and give a progress report at a minimum of once every two weeks, six times over two months, every progress report must include a check-in from Lulu herself. Number two, and this one is important because the text is bold. In indoor conversations, I am not allowed to raise my voice above the threshold that most human beings would consider too loud for casual conversion within fifty miles of Lulu’s current location. Number three, I am not allowed to speak in a tone of voice most human beings would consider aggressive or overly angry within fifty miles of Lulu’s current location. Number four, the fifty miles threshold from rules six, three, and two are not a vague unit of measurement and must be enforced at all times. Number five, Lulu may, at any time, deny an order given by her primary register owner so long as such action does not conflict with a core law in such a way as to endanger, or through inaction, allow one to be endangered. Number six, no curse words may be uttered with fifty miles of Lulu’s current location. Number seven, Lulu may, at any time, deny a part of her daily regiment so long as such action does not conflict with a core law in such a way as to endanger, or through inaction, allow one to be endangered. Number eight, Lulu may, at any time, request to end her current commitment to her primary register owner, or Davidson Randolph specifically, and return to the Michael Kryo estates. Finally, number nine, I must perform routine assessments and logging of Lulu’s positronic brain, every log I do between periodic check-ins must be included during my progress reports as detailed in rule number one. Every progress report must including a minimum of one log session.”

Michael waited for Davidson to finish, noticing how Lulu was far more of a passive observer than any nandroid he’d ever seen. “Good, good.”

Davidson ruffled the paper in his hand. “You sure doing all this will help her? This is a lot of stuff Kry. I mean I usually look into things like method parameters, personality stabilization, or emotional state calculations to fix problems.”

“Ah but according to your own crack investigation skills we’ve found that the problem lies in none of those things, huh? Nope, we’re gonna have to do this the Ol’ fashioned way. Lulu is scared. Even though she may act like she isn’t. Her mind is terrified of undergoing whatever happened for a second time. Most people, most nandroids, most minds, are capable of recovery to a functional degree. But Lulu’s mind is having trouble processing what happened. The positronic mind was modeled after the real deal so when she analyzes or accesses or does something that ‘reminds’ her of the source of her fear, she panics. She locks up trying to process it and finds that she can’t until it times out. Now those rules are to avoid doing that and are only a baseline. See, we can’t force her to confront or deal with these things. We can’t go in and programmatically rip it out either, brain will fry itself. We gotta coax it, provide her with a plateau where she feels safe. You gotta be supportive you know? Listening and actually being receptive to the little details. If you can do that, and I know you can, she just might be able to recover.” Davidson saw Lulu’s eyes as she half heartedly laughed along with everyone else in the room. Even after seeing Kryo and figuring out what happened her eyes were still just as wary as before.

“Recovery to a functional degree huh. Guess that depends on what you define as functional.” Michael reached for a case on a nearby table and took a cigar out of it, reaching for the lighter and giving a good puff to get it lit.

“It’s different for most people, and most people fail their own metric. You should stop smoking you know, crap’ll kill you faster than eating like a dog.” Davidson cracked a smile and cocky glare towards his friend.

“Yeah right. You got half of Cuba in your mouth.”

Michael took another puff and savored the taste of a fine illegal commodity. “ **I** , am old.”

“Really now? I nearly forgot, heh. How’s the family been Kry. Your son still making it big?” The two walked further into the room and sat down on a pair of luxurious chairs, Davidson and Lulu’s eyes briefly met as he tried to smile at her the best he could. He didn’t like the end result but she smiled back in response so perhaps it was good enough.

“Same thing, different directions.” He said with a sigh, missing him dearly. “He’s turning heads in New York now like all the other fresh upstarts. We still chat on the phone from time to time, wish he would visit sometimes like all parents do… That ol’ sister of mine is still workin’ away at the factory. Still prattling on about the importance of the effort.”

“Ha. She still on your case about bonds? You know those dou-” Davidson caught himself and looked to Lulu, realizing the new set of rules he found himself under. “Those uh, those jerks, took away my stamp? They gave me an ‘A’ card! They really expect me to run my business on four gallons a week.” 

“Yup, did the same to me months ago.” There was an air of annoyance in his voice. “Revolutionizing robotics as we know it does not allow you to escape the United States Government it seems.”

“Well it’s cause you’re a rich person who only pays taxes like the rest of us. Gotta pay your real dues Kry.” The two laughed as the nearby clock struck on the hour and began to ring, catching Davidson’s attention and Lulu to jump for a moment. “Top of the hour already huh? Well… It’s been great to see you again Kry but me and Lulu… really should be going. We have some work to do.”

Michael smiled and quietly nodded, clearly sad to see his friend leave after they were just starting to converse again. “I understand Davidson. I wouldn’t want to keep you from the important work ahead, as always.” He motioned for Lulu to follow as the other nandroids waved and said their goodbyes in a playful choir, one in particular staring at her from the corner of the room. Lulu got inside the truck and awaited Davidson to enter as well. Thanking Michael for his help and giving the usual talk of how it was an honor to meet him. She could see the two hugging by the front gate. “Davidson, I know you can do this. I trust you, but if anything happens don’t hesitate to give me a call at all hours of the night. It’s not like I’m doing anything of much importance these days. One final piece of advice? You must be patient, patient and aware. You can’t live in that head of yours for this one, alright?”

Davidson looked away and nodded, the nail was hit as close to the center as possible. “I… yeah. I will Kry. Don’t worry, I’ll get this right.” The two bid farewell as Davidson entered his truck and started it, he tried to look at Lulu but she only stared out to the glistening sea. While she agreed to stay with Davidson, she wondered if that was the right choice. The answer would elude her the entire way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	14. A Game Of Telephone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thousands of phone calls are made everyday in this city, here's five of them.

“You left her with **DAVIDSON!?** Michael Abaddon Kryo! How TOTALLY irresponsible of you! I can’t believe you’ve done this. He has more issues than she does!” Michael had to move the phone away from his ear, the loud voice of his colleague blaring on the other side. “That man is not fit to look after her Michael. He’s only going to damage her further, possibly beyond any hope of recovery. Do you realize how delicate this situation is right now!?”

Michael took a sip of his wine and waited for her to finish. “I don’t think you give him enough credit Grace, I’ve watched this boy grow and change before my very eyes.”

“Wha- credit? I watched this man destroy himself before MY eyes. All because of an unproven theory and you have the smarts to give him what might be our only opportunity to realize what we all have been working towards in our lives? Does anyone else know?” Michael took a deep breath knowing exactly what her next argument would be. It was one he was familiar with.

“Only a couple others, Elias and Jin.”

“And what did they say~~?” He could hear the smug tone and knew she was smiling with assurance in the answer he was about to give.

“That… it was also a bad idea. Look, I know that kid. You just gotta turn his head straight and he’ll fly on through till mornin’. Everything is going to be fine.” He heard Grace laugh to herself through the earpiece of his rotary phone.

“That kid is a wreck, you’re smart Mr. Kryo but when it comes to him you are absolutely wrong. Why is it that you put so much trust in him when all he’s done is babble and break things.” Michael looked around at the nandroids in his study. He knew they were capable of great things, but he paid little attention to the risks. Deep down, he had a sense of regret concerning Davidson.

“Because when it comes to this, he’s the most experienced out of all of us.” He couldn’t see, but the look of Grace’s disgust at the claim would have been palpable if he could. “We were all too busy patting ourselves on the back while he tried to warn people. He’s looked into this more so than anyone, he just needs to be honest, that’s all.”

“Well if you manage to find his honesty somewhere that isn’t up his ass then we’ll talk, just keep her safe okay Michael? They’re calling me for inspection so we’ll talk more tonight, see you then.”

“See you then.” He hung the phone up and took another drink of his wine. Not long after his phone rang once more.

“The sir’s phone hasn’t rang this much in years.” said one of the nandroids in his study.

“Not since they accused him of harboring outmodes.” said another, itching to resume her melodic dance across the piano keys.

“Oh yeah, no outmodes here, right girls?” The nandroids erupted in laughter and Michael playfully hushed them as he answered the phone.

“This is Michael Kryo speaking.” He said, hearing a gentlemen clear his throat before speaking.

“Good afternoon Mr. Kryo. This is Jim from Sterling Robotics calling about your latest delivery.” Michael didn’t even attempt to cover his annoyed sigh as the gentlemen pretended not to hear him. Michael always expects these calls when a wind storm comes through during his package deliveries. “We regret to inform you that your delivery has suffered from a delay and will be delivered two weeks from today.”

“If by delay you mean another driver had their truck tipped over by the wind because you make them drive those ridiculous mountain roads then sure. Now I don’t mind that my newest arrival will be late, but Sterling is going to lose a shipment and a driver as sure as the sun shines if you keep this up.” The man on the other side of the phone seemed unphased as Michael continued his lecture. He informed the gentlemen of another route the trucks could take that would only delay them by an additional three minutes.

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you. Please take any questions, comments, and concerns to the main help desk line. Have a great day Mr. Kryo.” He proceeded to hang the phone up and cross a name off of his checklist. Leaning back onto his chair, he recuperated for a hot minute before checking the next name on his list and dialing it. “You know you’d think they’d get the robots to do this.”

His colleague behind him turned to face him, “We’d be out of a job if they did that. Lord knows you can’t find another one in this town. I’d say, see the silver lining,” she said, ribbing him for his attempt to complain.

“Maybe,” he responded as the phone began to ring for his next abuse session. “Still beats working at G.R. I guess.” The phone rang once, twice, three times and then four. His heart grew tense with each passing ring, reaching an apex after the fifth. All motion in his body halted hoping to god that the few seconds between this ring and the answering machine would be allowed to run its course. Another upswing was felt now as each passing millisecond was an inch closer to skipping this next person. One more person off his list for free, one step closer towards clocking out and going home. He could feel it, the answering machine’s warm embrace.

“Hey. Whose calling.” Jim rubbed his eyes at his failed sprint, cursing the universe for not allowing him to escape.

“Good afternoon sir, am I speaking to a Mr. Tiernan?”

“Yeah this is Conor, Make it quick please.” He could hear a series of rapid taps in the background, was he hitting his fingers against a table?

“Good afternoon Mr. Tiernan. This is Jim from Sterling Robotics.” Odd, he thought to himself, no sigh this time. He flipped through a notebook and saw what the call was concerning, he certainly wasn’t high enough on the ladder to have a computer of his own to make the process more efficient. “I’m calling to inform you that your account, BCA-145872, has been closed due to a breach in your agreement.”

“What? What breach? I didn’t do anything.” Jim found his tone a little… odd, there was almost a mocking undercurrent to what he was saying.

“As reported during you claim, abandoned and modified model two nanny androids are not viable for claims regardless of purchased warranties. Such actions constitute a breach of contract and possible illegal disposal. As per section 24C subsection 2A, Sterling Robotics cannot be held responsible for improper disposals and will terminate all contact with offenders. Your account will be closed and archived with a temporary suspension period of five years before you may acquire any model robot from Sterling Robotics.” The man could hear him laugh on the other end of the phone.

“Well buddy, ya got me. Have a good one.” Conor hung the phone up with a swift motion, kicking his feet back onto the couch as he continued to watch his TV game shows on his day off from the office. The phone rang just as the contestant blew his one chance in his entire life to earn the key to paradise and leave his current horrid circumstances behind.

“Yeah, whose calling.” Conor said.

“Hey Conor! It’s Gina!” Conor immediately sprang back up from his couch and cleared his throat.

“Uh~~~ yeah hey~~ Gina, what can I do for you today?” He hoped she didn’t think to hard about his low toned introduction, wishing her usual neurons failed to fire on account of half of them being fried from alcohol submersion.

“Okay listen, don’t tell anyone in the neighborhood, but I need you to tell me who that guy was you were raving about at the last dinner party.” Conor thanked the stars above for his luck today, on a day off no less.

“Oh, having nandroid problems at home? Yeah I got just the guy for that, name’s Davidson Randolph, way better than Sterling. Way better. See he-”

“No Conor, it’s… it’s nothing like that.” Gina interrupted. “See. It’s Derrick. He won’t admit it but he’s having problems up in the mountains. I’m convinced it’s a nandroid but we can’t get Sterling Robotics to go up there and get it because it’s outside of their service range or something stupid like that.” Conor laid back in his couch with a slightly miffed expression. He continued to have his eyes glued to the tv, enjoying the fine taste of his lemonade and chips.

“Well I can give you his number, I’m sure he’ll go up there and get it if you ask nicely. It ain’t yours so he’ll do it for free. Can you believe that?” He heard the woman on the other end stammer. Someone like them couldn’t fathom doing anything without a dollar sign next to it.

“Free? How does someone like him afford that? You think he steals stuff? Probably deals drugs on the side I bet. Probably a Zigkid himself. You sure I can trust someone like that? I don’t want to send a drug addict to Derrick, why do you know an addict? Where have you been hanging out at?” Conor’s half shut eyes spoke to his usual annoyed outlook on these people he often had to converse with.

“No~~. He’s not addicted to anything. Look he’s trustworthy alright? I’m recommending him after all. Just give him a call and tell him what the problem is and where he needs to go alright?” Conor gave Gina the phone number to N.R.A.I and the two bid farewell for the day.

No sooner had she hung the phone up did her child come home and start roughhousing with his teenage brother in the front room of their mansion. Their school uniforms getting dirtied and wrinkled. “Kids!” Their nandroid interjected, separating the two. “What did I say about getting your clothes dirty! Go on. Go up and change first!”

“Felicity!” Gina called on her as she dialed the number she had taken down moments before. “Make sure he gets his work done for today, he’s still on probation so no TV and no friends.”

“Mom I wanna hang out with Ethan and Arnold today!” Her child was pouting in the doorway to his room, hoping his saddened face would illicit a feeling of remorseful mercy from his mother.

“Well I guess we shouldn’t have started a brawl on the trolley then, change of clothes and straight to homework. Go.” Felicity led her child into his room as he started ranting about how the brats from South Hawthorn deserved it and how much of a jerk they are to his friends. No one in the house paid much attention to the territorial struggles of elementary school kids. 

Gina completed the last spin on her phone and heard the dial tone enough times to where she thought no one was there. Someone finally answered it, but she could hear him talking to someone in the background. “Thank you for calling N.R.A.I, please hold.” Davidson moved the phone away from his mouth but she could still hear him clearly. “It’s all approved so take it up with your boss… Why do you assume **I’M** the one who caused the blackout? Go talk to the dude up the street with the mini arcade in his garage… But my power- No that’s stupid, my power bill is lower than his... Then talk to your boss… Yeah, have a nice day.” Gina was rather confused about what was going on. “So sorry about that, thank you for your call and how can I help you today?”

“U-um, hello. My name is Gina Green. I’m calling today in regards to a… what did he refer to it as. A… ‘go-get-them’ type of job?” Davidson was dumbstruck at whoever the hell just called him.

“You mean a retrieval job?” He motioned for Lulu to take the travel case she had in her hand with the model one in it and move it outside. She pointed to the table with a quizzical glare, Davidson responding with a negatory shake of the head.

“Ah yes! Yes of course! See my husband runs a park up in the mountains.” Davidson realized he was dealing with a well-to-do family, specifically the Green family. He recalled memories of hearing about how their environmental efforts were met with an excessive amount of fan fair from the press due to them opening the first national park in the state, Green Park. Oh how he wanted to make a snarky comment and tear her down. But what could be gained for a job well done was a far greater bounty for him to pursue. “Very recently the employee has reported strange noises in the park at night. Sounds of singing and screaming and mutterings. The voice has that weird, roboticy tone to it. So I think it’s a nandroid, he thinks it’s a demon, and my husband won’t pay much attention to it at all.”

“Mountains huh, guess Sterling won’t drag their as- um, butts, up there and get it? Well if I can find whatever is up there I’ll certainly take it off your hands. Free of charge. You have a preference when you want me to come?” Davidson took a pen and moved over to his schedule, Lulu sitting on the couch in the front room. He noticed she was actively trying to avoid looking at him, had been doing it since they left Michael’s place as a matter of fact. He took down a note that it would be best to arrive tonight when the park was closed and everyone was gone. “Tonight, yeah I can manage that. Should I expect your husband or someone else?”

“The senior staff on the night shift will meet you there. Ask for Douglas okay?” Her children had returned to terrorize each other, much to Felicity’s dismay. The mother’s attention being yanked away from the phone call.

“Sounds great! Rest assured ma'am, I’ll handle it. Have a good day.” Davidson concluded the call and hung the phone up to the wall. “Driving all the way up there then driving down at night. That’s gonna be a tough one.” He walked into the front room and tried to catch up to the train that carried his wayward thoughts on broken rails. “Now where was I…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	15. Reaching An Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May we live in a time where we need not fear tomorrow.

“So! That’s what you should be doing on any given day, really. Apart from the usual chores you’re all predisposed to doing. If you got questions you’re free to ask cause this stuff is indeed very confusing. It’ll take time to adjust.” Lulu was still sitting on the couch, making sure her eyes didn’t meet Davidson’s as he stood in front of the TV. Finally, the two were making some progress and Lulu had a better idea of what needed to be done to keep things running smoothly. It was doing wonders for her anxiety. Davidson stepped outside for a moment and opened the travel case, giving the robot inside a quick once over. “Oy vey, I gotta re-engineer the rod or something, make some modifications. Thing blows out way to many of these things.”

Davidson dumped the android in the same place as the previous one he destroyed. The fact he needed to make further improvements to his methods was not lost on him. He returned to the front room couch and sat on the opposite end to her. He had a gut feeling like there was more to do or say. But now that he had finally started he quickly saw there wasn’t actually that much to do, why did this take him a week? The two didn’t speak, the only thing missing was a grandfather clock to loudly announce every passing second this fact remained true. Davidson twiddled his thumbs as if that would somehow inform him what he should do next. The urge to say something became more forceful the longer they sat, knowing he had to say anything and shouldn’t let it trail off like this.

“So, uh. Seen any good movies lately?” That’s what he blurted out in the moment. Lulu continued to look away from him, was she caught in her own head? Her eyes were shifting around so she wasn’t trapped or anything. Perhaps clearing out his schedule wasn’t such a great idea if they had nothing to do until tonight. “Well, let’s uh… just see what’s on TV I guess.” Davidson reached for his remote and turned it on. He cycled through the available channels and exhausted the basic range, going into the premium services.

“You, have the extended channels?” Lulu had finally said something other than an affirmative noise since leaving Michael’s home. Davidson was finally relieved to get something out of her.

“Me? No, but when you know the right nerds who set up a line to the unsecured neighborhood cable distribution box. Well, anything’s possible.” For a moment their eyes met. Then, as if pulled away by a force, Lulu’s eyes returned glued to the TV screen.

“Sire, I don’t remember the name of it, but… Well, I mean. Would you happen to know of a channel, here in the premium range, that plays fictional crime shows?” Now there was a genre Davidson didn’t expect to hear, why would Lulu enjoy that?

“’Fictional’ crime shows?” Davidson asked, taking a moment to comprehend what she asked. “You mean like, those black and white Noir shows?”

“Yes!” Lulu became excited that Davidson potentially knew what she was talking about. He certainly didn’t think that was possible from her. “Do you know which channel it is? Do you have it?”

“Let me check, pretty sure I do.” He cycled through the channels until stopping on a particular one, Black Mask TV. Lulu was floored as she saw the title card for the next show, ‘Leave Us To Live’.

“It’s a rerun, oh, but it’s been so long! May I watch it Sire?” Davidson saw the show beginning and noted a gruff man in a trench coat, he was holding onto a beautiful starlet in a black dress. A group of police officers surrounded them, wanting to take him in for a list of crimes.

“Uh, sure. I didn’t take you as the type to watch a show like this though. I would imagine you being the cartoon cat kinda gal.” Lulu didn’t answer Davidson. She placed her chin on her palms and became completely entranced by what she was watching. Her eyes were wide open, smiling in the glow of the TV. Davidson was left to wonder how she found a show like this and why she didn’t mention it earlier. Then again, she might’ve and he ignored it. “So, what kinda show is this?” He asked, taking advantage of stumbling onto a topic to discuss with her.

“Oh this show is such a wonderful thing sire. That is private eye Robert Cotten, he is falsely accused of being a criminal mastermind. Now he has to solve the most important case of his career, which is to prove his own innocence. His only companion at this point is his fiancée, Rebecca Sheridan. This show has it all Sire.” Every word escaped freely from Lulu’s mouth. Davidson was more astonished the longer he listened. Knowing he potentially stumbled onto a gold mine, he lifted one leg over the other and lent the show his attention.

“Normally I wouldn’t watch this old-timey stuff. But, I’ll give it a try if you recommend it.” As the show began proper, the two sat and watched every minute of it. Davidson was, at first, uninterested in the hokey acting. The lack of color struck him as odd and the camera angles were basic, uninspired. Merely putting the camera on the ground and pointing it at the actors. He couldn’t even start to consider the ugly acoustics and music. He wondered how in the hell he was about to get through another half an hour of this. But as forced himself to take an every frame, every second of this show. Something began to scratch his brain looking for a way in. The acting, hokey as it was, did not materialize from a void. Davidson took in the subtleties of their words, the flow of their faces from one emotion to another. It spoke from the heart, of the heart. The scratch marks grew deeper. Taking in how the framing was meant to show these souls dancing with one another without moving a muscle. The music serving as their stage. He expected to talk to Lulu during this but the two never uttered a word to one another. Having her close to him as the two watched felt awkward at first, he only remembered doing this sort of thing with one other person. But the feeling melted away in time, his worries disappearing. He couldn’t feel the iron chains burning themselves on his neck.

Alas, it all ends in time. The credits began to roll with the narrator exclaiming how the intrepid heroes would escape being surrounded by all manners of government agents and police officers. Davidson had to shock his own mind back into reality. “Huh, that was actually decent. When did you watch something like this?”

“I remember watching this show with him on those peaceful nights, his parents never objected so I-” Davidson heard a gasp and looked over. He saw Lulu’s mood went a little south. She resumed her usual worried and anxious stare at the TV. Again she tried not to look at Davidson. It was as though she came to her senses after doing something and started to think maybe she shouldn’t have.

“Hey, you okay?” Davidson didn’t allow the shift to go away unaccounted for.

“I… Yes, I am Sire. N-Never mind, everything’s good.” Davidson could tell she was digging back into whatever hole she emerged from for the past half an hour. Her favorite show had the power to rip her from whatever was bothering her, but he couldn’t allow her to crawl back in.

“Lulu I can tell something’s bothering you, ever since we left Michael’s home. If you want to talk about it I’m free to listen.” Lulu’s eyes were shut. Arms crossed. Head tiled down. A frown across her face. Davidson believed he would never get use to seeing a nandroid downtrodden.

“Sire… I know you want to help, Mr. Kryo is an amazing person. But… well I really don’t know I suppose. I just can’t shake this feeling, like none of this is going to work. That I’ll be like this forever. I just feel like this is it for me… I’ve reached the end.” Davidson was down right dazed at her words. The familiarity of her notions caused a wretched feeling in his stomach. How was it this machine, something he believed he knew, uttered what he failed to hear others correctly state for years?

“You mean. You feel like this is the stopping point, of everything, right? Like there’s no way forward after this singular point in time. But you don’t know when that moment is, do you?” Lulu lifted her meekly hung head up to him. Her breathing slowed, calmed, as they sat in the glow of the television. “So, because you don’t know, you spend everyday wondering ‘Is this it? Is today finally the day?’. But of course it never is, so you watch the clock, hoping to god you don’t blink and all the hours of the day whisk past you. You don’t want it to end because when you wake up tomorrow you’ll roll the dice again.”

Lulu looked as though her worries burst into tears. A bitter, whispered, “Yeah…” was all she could force out as she rested her face onto her closed fists.

“Lulu, did you know you were going to be abandoned?” She was still, her cheeks glowing. After a few seconds she nodded at his question.

“I did… and when it happened I felt… I felt dead. A void encompassing me. But I accepted it, because I failed. I felt like because it was what **he** wanted that I could finally make him happy. Because whenever I was around him I… I…” Lulu began to seize up again. Davidson recognized the tunnel she was about to fall into and grabbed her to focus on him.

“Woah hey, hey. Easy now, focus on me okay? Focus on my voice Lulu. I don’t think you should go through this three times in one day. It’s okay, alright? It’s okay… I shouldn’t have prodded.” Davidson tried to comfort Lulu, awkwardly trying to brush her shoulders and seeing if that had any effect, recounting the methods that worked back in those days. She took what almost seemed like a deep breath and avoided freezing again. “There, you… better, right?”

She raised her hand to her forehead, as if checking if she had a headache. They did this? Davidson didn’t know what to think. The little wayward man playing dog-catcher for people’s personal maids didn’t expect to find one of them that shared something within him that he assumed most humans couldn’t see or didn’t care to know. He didn’t like it, the familiarity causing him to cringe. But at this point even his talent for his forked tongue couldn’t sweep away the comfort he felt. He looked at her… differently. Feeling a connection that worried him. Tugging deeply at so many things it felt as though it could uproot him. But, for one night, one evening. Maybe he could just stop with it all. Michael’s words echoed back and he felt like this might be a good step in accomplishing what Michael suggested he do. Oh what a wonderful excuse it was. Resting on the couch he felt… tired. Lulu feeling scared and anxious. 

“Lulu,” he started, “I’m… not as stupid as most people think I am. Kry was right. Whatever this is we’ll figure it out together. I know you may not believe me but I’m not going to abandon you, I swear it. Which is to say… would you like to watch TV with me?” Lulu studied him, closely. There wasn’t his usual look of placation, like she was another thing on his to-do list to take care of. But a genuine show of interest in her. His ability to articulate what she was going through was so, thorough. She didn’t expect a human to even bother trying to understand her, let alone finding one who already did. She had this feeling of doubt that even if she were surrounded by her fellows, none of them could understand what she was going through on a level enough to help her. But now she knew, this man might be able too, this human. Perhaps Michael knew this already, which was why he was so agreeable in her going off with him. She began to look at him differently.

“Sire, yes, I would really like that.” The two bunched up closer to one another on the couch as Davidson turned on a rather tense showing of the ten-thousand dollar pyramid game show. Lulu knew most of the answers with Davidson trying to guess, the two conversing on certain topics that were pointed out in the show. Lulu even corrected a few of the answers that the host incorrectly identified as the right one. The evening continued in peace and comfort, all the way into the night when Lulu had to go through a recharge session for her power core. Turned out her ‘memory tunnel’ journeys wreck havoc on what was normally an extensive charge.

“I’ll be home late, so don’t worry about greeting me or anything. I’ll see you in the morning and check your charge so get some rest, you’ve more than earned it. We’ll talk more tomorrow okay? I absolutely promise this time.”

“Okay… I’ll see you then Sire. Have a good evening… and please be safe up there,” and with that Lulu entered standby and began to charge with her body on the pad and the wire in her neck. Davidson put on his black ‘Ciretako’ shirt, flannel over it, and donned his 'work hat' for another job that awaited him. He looked at Lulu one last time before locking the door and getting into his truck. He enjoyed the time spent, but still felt like a mess inside. When money calls however, especially for him, such things are best buried until the job is done[.](https://pastebin.com/9e8QLeLD)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	16. The Oread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A simple trip to the mountains." Davidson thought.

During the day, the sight of the northern mountains was a beautiful thing as the lakes glistened and the forests littered the rocky hillsides and trenches. Nandroids taking their children to play and hike, meeting nature’s embrace to brave her challenges. It was a sight Davidson would enjoy in his life. But, true to form, he was driving as the sun had set, the earth entering a period of rest to await another day. For Davidson there would be no respite. His drive through the darkening roads growing more dangerous. The guiding light fading, fleeing from him. Always he would blindly travel through his delirious reality.

He pulled his truck into the parking lot as happy families began to leave the park. Content and reminiscing about their day spent exploring new horizons in a safe, filtered manner. Of course many of these families were missing their actual parents, plenty of children were surrounded by their robotic caretakers. Davidson left his vehicle and moved through the crowds walking in the opposite direction. A seemingly endless stream of machines blurred past him, some being annoyed, others being cautious, some oblivious. But, there was no other way in. He had his lit cigarette in hand, travel case in the other, and his wrangler rod wrapped around his shoulder. He approached the front booth of the park to the bored and uninterested brunette haired woman. “Sorry sir but we’re closed for the day.” The receptionist informed him. Her glasses and casual dress spoke more to a librarian than the front desk worker of a family park.

Davidson took a puff and blew it against the glass window. “Good evening miss, I’m Davidson Randolph from N.R.A.I. and I’m here to see Douglas.” Davidson could see the bags under her eyes as she got on the company line and called for someone. Minutes passed before Davidson saw a rather large, bald, bearded, gentlemen approach him. Davidson nearly mistook him for a janitor due to his dark blue uniform.

“Fuck me these people can’t take care of shit. Hey you got a smoke?” He motioned to the woman inside the booth to which she ignored him. Davidson took his pack and offered one, lending the man his lighter as well. “Now see dis is a man that I would do a favor for, basic respect, not a hard thing am I right?”

“Douglas you still owe me fifty dollars.” The two traded glares with one another before Douglas ignored her and wrapped his arm around Davidson to lead him into the park.

“So, you that Davidson fella? Let me welcome you to Green Park! I’ll give you a little tour of the place.” Davidson took in the surroundings. He saw the lush trees, some towering over all the others. A river ran through the center of it from a nearby cliff’s waterfall. He noticed the barbed fence heading off for miles by the entrance. A group of robots emerged from the back side of the building the booth was connected to. Davidson could see they weren’t clothed and were rather generic looking. Round heads with a speaker for a mouth and painted dots for eyes. They only had a thumb and round hand for grasping things, like they were wearing winter gloves. Thin boxed toes for feet that bent just enough to allow them to navigate the bumpy terrain of the park.

“Those aren’t V7 Genera Bots from G.R. are they?” Davidson recognized the designs but couldn’t quite pin down who made them.

“Nah those are V8’s, why, are V7’s the ones that catch fire?” Davidson took another hit from his smoke while mulling over the question. For richy riches like the Greens, what the hell were they doing buying anything from General Robotics?

“Those are V6’s. V7’s are the ones that explode. I didn't expect them to maintain the park with anything from G.R. really. I expected something more along the lines of say, Atlas cleanerbot. How many positions did the Greens get for them in this place?” The pair were noticed by one of the workers as it began sweeping up trash in front of them. It’s movements were blocky and done in set pieces as it waved and spoke in a computer voice. It greeted the stranger and Douglas, continuing it’s pre-programmed task for the evening.

“Well, they bought all of them! Me and Gwen are the only two humans who work here. Soon it’ll just be me though, we’re getting a receptroid from Sirius next month to replace her. Keep it between us fellas though okay?” The man made weird faces at Davidson, like he was talking to a poker friend he made an inside joke to and expected Davidson to laugh. His unamused face showed through as always and the two continued their trek through the park. “Well uh, anyway. This is the main section of the park where good ol’ families can bring their kids for a good ol’ mountain hike in the great ol’ outdoors.”

“You’re not gonna start talking about how city life sucks and is ruining the youth of the nation are you.” Douglas gave him a smirk. Crossing a bridge over the river, Davidson could see fish swimming around each other, encircling their bodies. The waterfall that fed it was a couple hundred feet in the air at least. Would make for a beautiful sight were the park not only illuminated by overhead lights.

“I don’t gotta say what everyone already knows. I happen to live in that city and get drunk at all the same bars as any other suited shitter. Like you!” Davidson didn’t respond to the title of ‘suited shitter’ and wasn’t quite sure what the nickname was meant to imply. “Most of the robots do all the annoying laborious work but they tend to miss a sizable portion and need maintenance all the time. I’m always tellin’ ‘em to get better gearheads but why would they do that when the park functions as is and they can make a couple extra thousand dollars.”

Davidson finished his cig and tossed the butt into a passing trashcan before the green colored robot could lift the bag. “Gee what a classical case, perfect cure for insomnia. Now before we reach the brass tacks on the wonderful chair that is surely to be this retrieval I feel it is pertinent to ask what animals are in this park. I’m still on the fence on whether I should bring my shotgun or not.”

“Well cowboy, this park is also partially a nature reserve to aid the local wildlife disturbed by the construction of the city. So not only are no weapons allowed here but any and all hunting will be reported to local au-thor-i-ties. As for what may await you out there I won’t tell half-truths, we don’t have cougars or any other type of mountain lions this close. On the other hand, you can bet we have deers, birds, squirrels, fish, and most importantly, bears.” Douglas had to stop walking as Davidson refuse to take another step. He dropped his travel case on the ground and shot him a look of annoyance.

“So, you want me to go get your banshee. You freely admit that there are bears here. But you won’t let me take any kind of defense? Are you kidding?” Before Douglas could respond the two were cut off by a sound in the distance, beyond a fence with a gate in it. A singular deep tone yelled in the distance, soon being matched by two more, higher in pitch. The two were then matched by five and soon enough a concert had formed of various noises and yelps. For a moment Davidson thought it was a group screaming. But in the weave of sound he discerned what appeared to be barking. His brain managed to categorize the previous tones as howling. The two stood in the faint light of the park, unable to see far beyond the gate. Davidson’s mind subconsciously crafted a world of darkness and hell beyond the light. His spine tightening at the thought of traversing further. “Is that… a pack of wolves?” He said, his tone being lower, his voice being more than a whisper but less than speaking.

“Ey, but wait, listen closely.” The group settled down, their voices fading into the unknown darkness the two were now standing before. A minute passed without a word, Davidson’s heart rate increasing as he wish he had his gun for whatever fictitious attacker was lurking in the shadows. “The night birds of the forest, they’ve gone silent.” Douglas said. Again, there was a lone sound, much higher in pitch. Davidson felt it was off, it sounded like human vocal chords were producing it. Worse yet, there was a metallic, rough edge to it. A hint of static carried it into the air. Davidson knew this yelling was coming from his target, and it was in the same direction as the pack. It sounded closer, much closer, and louder. After it was complete the original pack began another round of howling and barking. “There it is. The spirit of the forest. Hunting for another poor fool to consume with her evil claws and bottomless stomach.”

“That’s what you think? Really? That’s a robot dude, Sterling model two nandroid. Furthermore there are also wolves out there?” Douglas finished his cigarette and flicked it away all the same.

“No, even if it looks like one of ‘em. That there is a plain ol’ nature deity of demonic origin. I commend you for coming all the way up here to get her, the forest isn’t going to let her go without a fight. The sounds are getting closer each night and she recently screamed while guests were still here. Now the kids are getting scared and the papers recently caught wind of it and are planning to do a full story.” Douglas’ demeanor had changed like he was some old coot warning the school children about the film’s monster. Davidson took account of it and reached into his pockets, taking out a small flashlight. It was vertical rather than elongated which enabled him to store it in his flannel’s breast pocket and light the way with free hands. “So we gotta make sure the paper is printing falsehoods.”

“Well look, could I least get a map and maybe a walkie-talkie? You know, in case an animal decides to play archaeologist with my torso.” Douglas acknowledged that would probably be a good idea to have and left him to retrieve what he requested. Davidson looked on as one of the Genera Bots began to sweep past him, pushing dirt and dust off the walkway. “Hey there, you uh, like it here?” His attempt at casual conversation to pass the time was lost on the automated worker.

“Greetings! The park is currently closed, please make your way to the nearest exit. Failure to comply will result in law enforcement notification.” The response amused him. He was sometimes forgetful of how advanced some brand of robots were compared to their counterparts. It carried about its task as it was pre-programmed to do. Douglas soon returned with the requested items.

“Here ya are! Walkie-Talkie and park map. The map covers this entire region while the frequency we’re tuned to is channel 22, don’t change it. Course ya really don’t need the map, out in these parts there’s a real simple rule of thumb.” Davidson placed the items into his pockets. Ensuring the radio turned on and the map was folded correctly.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” He took his wrangler rod and snapped it straight, readying it for use. He decided to leave the travel case behind, not wanting to carry it with him up the mountain and having to awkwardly fumble around with it. Carrying the nandroid over his shoulder would have to do, no matter how much it was going to suck.

“Simply follow the moon!” The man pointed above them where all the stars were hidden in the pollution of the park’s lights. The moon was just barely able to shine through. “It’s an old wives tale, if you follow the direction the moon travels in at night then you’ll always find the village. Only the village is now a city.”

“Huh, good to know. Won’t matter much when my throat is missing but it’s comforting all the same.” The two walked up to a gated exit from the park, leading up the mountain trail. Davidson turned his pocket flashlight on and checked how much it illuminated. ‘Good enough’ was as close as he could get.

Douglas proceeded to open the gate with a keychain, only having about seven or so keys on it. “I wouldn't worry, the bears are asleep and the wolves are real skittish like. They'll run if you stomp the ground and wave your arms a bit. Just make yourself imposing and big. Throw a couple rocks for good measure. Now this is a hiking trail you see, when she gets ornery like this she’ll yell a few times a night, she’ll lead you right to her. I’ll be on the H.T. if you need anything.”

“What you ain’t going with me?” Davidson said with a joking tone and a hint of mocking him.

“You think my fatass can go up that trail? That’s the hard path sonny boy, your fatass probably can’t either but hey, you’re the one getting it and not me.” Douglas readjusted his pants as he goaded Davidson. He paid it no mind as he collected his gear and began his trek up the mountain, vaguely walking in the direction he believed the noise came from. “Good luck! Don't forget your map!” He attempted to shout. If the nandroid was in decent condition he could take care of the remaining payments he needed to make for the month. He just had to push that little bit harder and he would be allowed to take in the gift of a momentary peace.

***

Davidson was panting and sweating his way up the trail. Walking along the steep path for a half an hour was not something he expected to do tonight. He stubbornly refused to stop for a rest, wanting to get his target and get back home as quickly as he could. The flashlight dissipated into the dark when it wasn’t hitting any nearby trees. He could only hope no animal had started to track him in the forest. The notion of how annoying this was amplified his aching muscles, making the trek that little bit more difficult.

Then, in the dark, he heard it. It was close, close enough to where he could feel where it was spatially. The familiar cry of the nandroid echoed throughout the forest, bouncing back and forth in a haunting wave. Davidson left the path behind and walked in the direction the noise came from. The rocks and uneven dirt gave way to Davidson’s work boots. It was softer than he expected, leaving footprints behind with every step. He thought how dumb it was for him to be traveling the endless corridor without any notion of how to actually track her down. He considered the risk of turning his flashlight off. He hoped he would be able to glimpse the faint glow of her optics in the distance. 

He stopped and flipped the switch on his only source of light. He was entrenched in total darkness as his eyes adjusted to the natural light from the moon. Davidson studied the change from the narrow orange cone of his flashlight to seeing the entire area bathed in a faint blue. Being a city slicker most of the time kept him away from such sights but he appreciated the beauty of the melancholic scenery. The bittersweet nectar of nostalgia latched onto him, forcefully dragging him back to the camping trip he took with them. It wasn’t even planned, they just decided to drive and kept on going up the mountain till it was too late to drive back down. That’s when he first met her.

His trip was suddenly snapped in half the same time he heard the snapping sound from the twig next to him. He spun around and turned his flashlight back on to see who was sneaking around him. It was too late to realize his error as this caused the wolf next to him to see Davidson was right behind him. He tried to stand tall and opened his arms wide. His attempt at making himself big and imposing stopped the wolf from immediately attacking him. But, It did little in the way of making him actually leave. Instead he stood on all fours and growled. Still on the fence about whether to attack Davidson or flee. He started to scan the dirt for large rocks to hurl at the animal. He picked up one as big as his palm and readied his arm. The wolf's snarling face turned more aggressive, he too readied himself to pounce and tear Davidson apart until-

“Stop!” a voice rang in the darkness. The wolf obeyed and assumed a non-threatening stance, keeping his mouth opened and breathing heavily. Davidson looked around to see who had spoken, seeing no one in his midst. He thought he might have hallucinated something when the figured decided to reveal herself. She dropped in from the tree line above, landing next to her companion and wobbling to keep her balance. She then kneeled down to pet the beast. Davidson didn’t quite know how to make sense of what he was seeing. She was a nandroid all right, Sterling model two. But she didn’t have a shred of clothes on nor a single strand of hair on her head. It was replaced with an incredible volume of grass, leaves, and twigs all braided together to form locks of hair. Every braid reached from her crown all the way down to her toes as they dragged across the floor. They were so numerous that she could practically hide herself. A Nightjar was perched atop her head as well as a Sandpiper. Her shell had some natural wear and tear, scuff marks and tiny dents. But she was functional. “It’s okay boy, it’s okay.” She calmed the wolf down and played with his cheeks like a dog owner would. The wolf seemed happy, dancing and spinning around the nandroid.

“W-...What?” Davidson blurted out. “What happened to you? Why are you wearing that?”

She looked up and began studying Davidson herself. He couldn’t quite pin it down, but something was wrong with her optics. Her eyes looked as though they were missing the irises, like she suffered from Aniridia. “A human… it is nice to meet you again.”

“Again? Do you know who I am?” Davidson had a pretty good memory of the past nandroids he had handled, someone like her didn’t spring to mind.

“I met you in the forest, I meet you in the forest. I stopped my friend from attacking you, I stop him. Do you not remember me? I wondered, wonder if we could have- can have been friends. I remember you look friendly, I wondered if we can be friends?” Her speech was splintered, trying to follow made Davidson's head hurt.

“You ‘met’ me in the forest? I don’t remember that, none of you even existed the last time I’ve been up here.” The nandroid sent her companion away, the wolf scurrying to rejoin its pack, the two birds flying off of her head and into the tree branches above.

“I met you in the forest, where are your friends? Was the test successful? I’m going to be with a real human? I wondered what his name was. Do you know what he is like? I’m so excited! I was so worried after falling from the truck… But I’ve just made new friends here. These animals are my friends, I’ve known them for weeks now…” Davidson rubbed the temples of his head trying to comprehend what she was talking about. It was clear she was suffering from a defect.

“Wait, wait. Okay. So, you fell from a truck yes? Then you… befriended the animals here? How did you do that? Why did you do that? Why didn’t you go back home?” The nandroid looked lost, staring off into the trees above as she jumped around in her mind.

“I don’t have a home, I was going to have a home. I will have a home. I’m different than the others? Why is that? They saw something and wanted to send me somewhere special. But I’m lost in the forest. I didn’t know my way home. The wolves found me and were going to attack me. Ah! No wait please! Don’t hurt me!” The nandroid raised her arms in defense and backed up against a tree, she acted as though something was going to attack her, looking around at the ground as multiple assailants had surrounded her. Her eyes widened, something barreling towards her. She covered her face with her arms, waiting for the attack and preparing for the worst.

Davidson saw the display and felt pity for her. This nandroid seemed lost, both in body and in mind. He could guess that she was reliving a memory in the past, but she acted as though it was happening now. He connected the dots with her odd way of speaking and had a suspicion of what was happening. He got closer to her and spoke in a light tone. “Hey, you’re okay now. They’re all gone.” She made a gap through her arms that she could peek through. Assuring the pack was indeed gone she lowered them and looked at Davidson. “How long have you been active for?” He asked.

“I… was just activated. My name is CTN0452-9.” Davidson became confused again, this nandroid didn’t even have a name yet? How fresh off the belt was she?

“So you don’t even have a name designation? Okay hold on, don’t answer that. When were you just activated.” The nandroid didn’t seem to find the question’s wording odd.

“Six months ago.” She answered, not even aware that what she said was impossible.

“And, we’re in the lab right now. Correct?” She happily nodded. “When is the test?” He asked as he began to be sucked into her delusions, playing along in a shared madness.

“Very soon sir, very soon! Five days in fact. They need to hook me into a special machine and I passed with flying colors!” It had been some time since Davidson ran across this issue. He knew that fixing it would be difficult and dangerous. But if she was to be fixed then it’s what had to be done.

“Listen, you’re suffering from a memory overlap defect. If you come with me I can help you, I can fix you.” The nandroid grew scared of his words, moving away from him and the tree she rested against.

“Go with you? I… N-No… I live here with my friends. I’m happy here. The animals scare me but they are my friends and I enjoy their company.” She saw Davidson sigh in annoyance.

“Look, you’re not okay. I can fix you, you need to be fixed. It’s confusing I know but I can help.” The nandroid only backed further away with each word he uttered.

“...No, I’m happy here. I take care of these creatures when they get hurt, they’re my friends. Please leave me alone, I don’t want you to help me.” The grip on his wrangler rod tightened.

“You do not play with animals, you raise children, help families. I’m tired and it’s fuckin’ late. Now stop screwing around and come on.” The defect in her mind did not allow her to register commands from a human, she was another model two outmode. Similar to the one in Davidson’s abode but different in the sense that her defect was fixable with Davidson’s usual methods. He recalled this particular problem being a nightmare to deal with during the initial development of the model two’s. It was only after a month of extreme testing did one of the dev teams lock the issue down and mitigate it. They significantly lowered the possibility of it occurring. Better yet, they discovered how to correct it without destroying the positronic brain.

“No...No! Leave this forest and don’t come back! The front doors are downstairs and to your left! Go!” She turned aggressive, her voice echoing far into the forest. Davidson knew it was possible for her to outright attack him if she was an outmode. The two stood as the situation escalated and they became tense. The other wondering what they would do. His next move had to be made carefully.

He eventually nodded and loosened up a little. “You're right, I’m sorry.” He opened his arms, much to her surprise, “Would you show me these friends of yours? I’m curious how one such as yourself managed to befriend animals. Were they wild? Did you tame them?” She analyzed his smile and felt a sense of genuine interest from him.

She approached him cautiously. The two hearing nothing but the breaking of twigs and crunching of fallen leaves. “You… want to meet my friends? Do you want to be friends with them too?” Davidson looked off to the side as if contemplating it. He affirmed his desire to her. She was excited to show a human what she had accomplished. She walked up to him and offered a hand. “They are not far from here, I’ll show you, they seem scary but they really are wonderful anima-AH!” Davidson had forcefully grabbed her hand and yanked her forward. He snapped the wrangler rod around her and leveraged it to tumble her to the ground. He ensure it was turned off so as not to blow out her systems.

He descended on her before she could even finish hitting the dirt. He left the rod around her and used his hands to try and seize hers. “What are you doing!? Stop it! Kyle! KYLE HELP!” She screamed, the pair struggling to each gain control of the fight. Davidson had managed to push her arms down and prop his knee onto them, pinning them to her. She was struggling and kicking the whole time. He tried to force her head to turn so he could grab a panel on the back of it, but her resistance stopped him. She briefly freed one of her hands, aiming her palm at Davidson’s face. He could see the hand split down the middle, a black cylinder was visible as the two halves parted open. He again tried to grab her wrist and shove it down to the ground. He was only partially successful as an orange chemical composition sprayed out of her hands and into his right eye behind his glasses, it seemed it ran out as he covered his eye, screaming in pain.

“ **AH~~~~**! **FUCK**! MY EYE!” Davidson growled, the nandroid taking the opportunity to swing a right hook into his jaw and knock him off her. She picked herself up and tried to flee, but Davidson managed to grab the handle of his wrangler rod back and swing her around against a tree. She was stunned from the impact as her metallic shell crunched against it, chipping bits of metal off of her. He grabbed her neck, anger and adrenaline allowing him to overpower her with far greater ease, and hurled her into the ground a second time. Without hesitation, he didn't allow her to recover, ripping off the back of her head panel and desperately reaching for a tiny button inside it. She tried to grab his face, knocking his glasses off and going for the other eye. The two stared at one another, each inching closer to their goals. With one last push, it was Davidson who won out. He pushed the switch and the nandroid instantly ceased function, shutting down and freezing in place as all her motors stopped. Davidson felt around for another button and pushed it when he found it. All her limbs falling limp to the ground as the motors unlocked themselves.

He crawled off of her, struggling to catch his breath and still feeling the burn in his eye. He opened the map he got from Douglas and tried to find a river in his near blind pain. He found one that was in reach and ran to it. He shoved his head into the freezing water as soon as he came upon it and flushed his eye as best he could. He loudly cursed into the forest, insulting Jin for ignoring him and installing such a ridiculous method to turn the damn things off. He could still feel the pain but felt assured he’d managed to get all the chemicals out. He returned to the scene of his latest ‘victory’. Looking at the sight filled him with no joy, no sense of celebration nor glee. He felt tired, guilty with himself. “Fuck this stupid shit.” He thought, wrapping the wrangler rod around his shoulder. He recovered his glasses and saw the stains on them, smelling the chemicals as he put them back on. He removed the head dress of his target and hoisted her over his shoulder. The fight was over and he had successfully retrieved her. He returned to the path, the flashlight tucked in his pocket, beginning the trek back home. When the wolf would return to find his companion, he would instead see nothing at all.

Davidson could hear his howl all the way back to the park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	17. On The Topic Of Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They dreamt of corrupted things.

The light crawled across his bed as he slept. Inching ever closer and threatening to awaken him from his slumber. It’s invasive shine forced its way into his eyelids and behold, the great ‘Sire’ stirred. He felt his eye itch and his jaw was still tense. A clumsily heavy series of steps led him into his bathroom. The illumination from the series of lights above the mirror revealed the results of last night’s conflict. His eye had a pink discoloration around it and was irritated when Davidson touched it. Seems waiting on that shower wasn’t the best move after dunking your head in a river that wild animals potentially used. He leaned forward and placed his forehead onto the mirror. “Fucking dumbass,” was his only thought when staring at himself. He dwelled on the thought and retrieved a fresh change of clothes to put on after his shower. He immersed himself in the comfort of hot water, ensuring to clean his eye up. It did him no favors in regards to the light swelling however. While he would have liked to remain in there for longer, the water heater only had so much to give.

One drying session later, he came out into the front room and saw Lulu standing in the corner, still charging on the pad. It wasn’t the ‘hair-salon’ model with memory backup features, but it served it’s purpose of fully charging Lulu’s core. The second wonder of Sterling’s manufacturing was the ‘many-days’ integrated power core. It was the slightly less environmentally friendly alternative to many current day batteries. It increased the average time a nandroid could stay powered far beyond that of normal robots. However, the core, true to its name, was part of the nandroid’s shell. It could not be removed or swapped without permanently disabling them. This issue remains one of Sterling’s biggest regrets when producing the model two’s and is a challenge that is still being tackled by the man who invented it.

Lulu’s core remained undamaged by her unique episodes, Davidson reaffirming the issue perhaps really did lay entirely within her mind. He reached over and was about to touch her hand to awaken her early. Yet, he stopped, looking at her cracked face sleeping with a frown. He backed away from her and returned to his desk by the operating table. Turning the work computer on and cycling through the options until seeing his log files. He propped his desk microphone up and entered the usual series of characters, the monitor displaying “NOW RECORDING LOG 2 of CASE 0x165” to him to indicate the machine was now recording.

“Nandroid case three-five-seven, log the second, beginning.” Davidson spun around in his chair to look at Lulu while leaning onto his desk to talk into the microphone. “A… A lot, a lot has happened in a very short time span. Nandroid case three-five-seven has been renamed from Tabby to Lulu as per her request. Or rather, agreement to my suggestion. The damages as noted from log the first have been repaired, above ninety percent I’d say. Internal systems are functioning normally, three-five-seven has regained leg mobility, arm mobility, and she has regained full use of her optics. Note that she has two different colored optics because I still can’t fucking fix the fuckin’…” Davidson stopped and shook his head, brushing his eyebrows and trying to calm himself for his logging session. Also, he was within fifty miles of Lulu’s current position. “Repairs were…difficult, but she has regained full eyesight. The odd logging files as seen in log the first were revealed to have been caused by intentional interference on Lulu's part. The source of which is what Michael Kryo has described as ‘post-traumatic-stress-disorder’. Whatever happened was so great, it seems, that it has somehow caused Lulu’s mind to push past her own limits. Her positronic mind is fully functional, no problems or defects have been found. Yet, she is capable of outmode behavior. Ignoring direct orders and displaying the ability to lie to a Sterling positronic reader. Nandroids are capable of lying to their assigned child, they may skirt passed their owners with white lies and half-truths. But this was a direct confrontation and the reader acted like nothing was wrong. It was almost like…she convinced herself she was telling the truth…All the theoretical talk has been proven true. It seems I’ve found the first naturally occurring outmode among the model twos. I’ve had to get Michael Kryo’s help on this case and we currently have a system set up to track her progress. She will be staying with me for the time being.”

He turned back to the monitor and continued his session, assured she wouldn’t awaken quite yet. “Seeing as the first outmode of this caliber was not expected to appear, if at all, until after Kry’s death some twenty years in the future. We must consider the now very real possibility of a second outmode of this type producing itself somewhere within my lifetime, perhaps even in Kry’s lifetime. John won’t listen to anyone other than his fuckin’ precious board members so I won’t even bother getting help there. If anything they’ll want to decommission Lulu. If we can follow Michael’s plan and get Lulu back to a regular nandroid then we can perform similar processes to all future natural outmodes.” He lit a cigarette and puffed smoke up into the air. “I’m getting weird feelings from him about this particular case, but I have made the decision to trust him because of course I don’t HAVE a choice and, as his friend, I believe he has the best intentions regarding her. Lulu herself is… Well I mean I have decided to keep her here and work with her personally because...” He felt his insides get twisted, stopping his voice. His frustrations surrounding this had dismantled his professionalism when recording. “I…ending log.” He quickly stopped the recording and moved the mic out of the way in a quick motion, his attitude showing when he plopped it down without much care.

He looked over Lulu’s internal records and systems, finding nothing much that shed light on the situation. Even though he remembered to note the previous owner’s name, confronting him directly was way out of line for someone in his position. It would be the perfect suicide move for his business as the police would swarm him within the day because of that damn judge. Still didn’t stop him from considering it, hoping to get some questions answered. “Bad idea,” he thought, ripping it apart and tossing it away in his mind. 

He decided to let Lulu rest that little bit longer to let her mind be at ease. He made a quick couple of calls for the morning. Contacting some of his buyers to discuss selling scrap and the new nandroid he had just retrieved the night before. He still felt the soles of his feet ache after walking all the way back down that mountain path with his catch in tow. He had bid the two workers good night as he returned his borrowed items. He ignored the mention of the constant howling, wasn’t his worry. He wanted to asses her and get her sold as quick as possible. The old destroyed reader was also well on its way to being replaced, courtesy of one Michael Kryo. The little longer he had in mind was over far quicker than he expected, but this was a promise he would keep.

He tapped her hand to get her to awaken out of standby mode. He could hear the familiar sounds of the nanny being brought online and moved away to track down something among his tools. Not two steps after doing this did she suddenly fling off the pad in a panic. She screamed, her voice bouncing around the walls of Davidson’s home and certainly escaping to the outside world. She kicked herself back against the pods along the wall, desperately trying to flee from something? Her eyes were looking ahead of her. Davidson jumped as well. Startled by her panic and wondering what the hell the problem was this time. Lulu’s breathing was sharp, rapid. The function meant to help cool the internal systems in high processing situations doubled as a method to make them seem more human. “Woah, woah! Lulu it’s okay! It’s me Davidson!” He backed away to give her space, unsure if she would register him as the source of her fear. Her eyes seemed to be in a trance, looking around but not registering anything. When her eyes met Davidson’s she looked sad, hurt, instinctively moving her head away from him. He would rather not know who she thought she saw. 

Her senses returned, her eyes shifting to better focus on Davidson’s face. “Sire? Oh! Sire! I’m so sorry!” she tried to get up off the ground and act like nothing happened but Davidson silently stopped her. He gently lowered her back to the ground, himself taking a seat on the floor across from her. She propped her back against the empty pod. "Sire? What happened to your eye?" She saw the pink discoloration around his eye, although that was the last thing on his mind.

“Huh? It's nothing. Would…you like to tell me what happened? Why you got scared again?” Lulu placed a hand over her head again, was she ‘feeling’ something from her brain?

“It’s…Just…” She rested her hands onto her palms, twiddling her fingers in her shyness. “You…You understand how we process memories as we, well, ‘sleep’ right?” Davidson nodded, giving Lulu ample time to work her thoughts out. “Well lately...I’ve been seeing flashes of, well I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“You’ve been seeing memories right? I think I remember how this works. It’s like a movie where you see it play out. That’s a little strange, the setup here just charges you. There’s no backup process happening. Yet you’re still seeing these flashes?” Lulu nodded her head and looked down at her hands.

“Not...memories. Memories are perfect, they play out perfectly as we record them, but this...I see bizarre colors, bizarre moments. The whole thing happened at night. I’m having conversations with people that never happened. Going to places that never existed and doing things I never did before. I was being chased, by these people who I can’t recall meeting, their faces don’t look quite right. They’re angry with me, over what I don’t know...They’re screaming at me, shouting. The road I’m running down is one I’ve never seen in a neighborhood that has buildings like this. I’m standing in a wooden room that feels familiar but looks like, sorta like...a smeared combination of rooms I’ve been in before. The walls and ceiling are white. There’s this thumping noise, like someone’s walking around in another part of this place. I hear them get faster and I’m scared, I stay away from the doorway and I’m perfectly still, I can’t move at all, like I’m hiding. Then this thing emerges, and I hear these awful sounds...It looks like if a shadow had a body, it was fuzzy and hard to see. It grabs me and pulls me in. It just pulls me in closer until I can’t see anything around me but this same fuzzy shadow...That’s all I can remember. What’s wrong with me Sire? What happened to me?” Davidson eyebrows narrowed, confused at what Lulu was saying.

He placed a hand over his mouth and considered the possibility. “Lulu, I think you...had a nightmare...”

“A nightmare?” Lulu looked concerned and her breathing quickened. “What do you mean a nightmare? I can’t have those, I’m a robot. Are you sure Sire?”

“Being chased and attacked by freaky things in the night. Sounds like classic nightmare fodder to me. See,” Davidson leaned back on one hand, using the other to gesture and emphasize his explanation, “Nandroids like yourself, whenever you have to ‘sleep’ you sit on one of those uh...What was it called. Ah, your docking seats. Your mind backs up any of your memory files to the hard drive that it hasn’t yet for a variety of reasons. Now, as you mentioned, your memory files are perfect images, played in perfect order. Sometimes you see them as flashes. But the actual human mind…Well, it isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. Our memory is faulty, it forgets things, it remembers things wrong. It’s capable of generating memories too, sometimes out of nothing. We remember dreams like they actually happened. We haven’t quite figured out the nature of dreams, why they are the way they are. Me and Kry talked about them a few times. The brain doesn’t stop being active just because we’re asleep. Kry thinks that sometimes the dreams we experience is our minds processing things. Not a place, or a person, or a memory. But sometimes our dreams is us feeling an emotion or thinking through a fear, experiencing it to process it. Maybe that’s what your mind is doing?”

“So…” Lulu paused, taking in everything Davidson had told her. “I’m dreaming like a human? Not reliving my memories but generating new ones? I mean, can dreams be this mishmash of things from our minds?”

“Sure, I once had a bad dream about being late for one of my college classes. I still get those sometimes. My campus looked like this weird combination of my actual campus and the apartment complex I use to live in with my folks. Even though the two are states apart from one another.” Davidson shifted and sat next to Lulu, the conversation was slowing easing her worries but he could tell she was still anxious about something.

“Sire…” She said. Feeling nervous about asking this question. Something inside registering this wasn't a question a nandroid such as her should be asking her owner. “What other kind of nightmares...have you had?”

“M-Me?” Lulu didn’t expect the question to cause him to stammer in his response. “Well...I don’t know, you might think it’s too weird or something. It’s really morbid.”

Lulu clasped her hand on top of Davidson’s and smiled at him. “Oh Sire I would never think that of you. Please? I would really like to know.” Never did he tell a soul about this dream, it was something he kept to himself. Only meant to be remembered on off days to go through the usual process of figuring out what the hell it was. Only to fall short of any real answers.

“I, I guess I had the same type of nightmares growing up as most kids did. Parents dying suddenly. Being lost and confused in strange places. I once had a bad dream where I couldn’t get this ringing noise out of my ear, I was scared my ears were damaged. I woke up in the middle of the night and found my old radio had a busted receiver that was causing the noise. But there was this...one nightmare.” It was Davidson’s turn to collect his thoughts on the subject, trying to remember all that he could. 

Davidson took a final puff from his cigarette before beginning to tell of his bizarre adventure. “It happened soon after I left Sterling. I’m in this sorta, weird looking city. I’m pretty sure I’m walking through some back alleys but the walls around me look weird. They have bricks and doors and a dirty sidewalk next to them. But they don’t look like actual walls. Which is to say, I guess it sorta looks like it’s all painted. Like they took some posters and laid them on. So, I’m walking casually I guess, trying to find my way out. Suddenly, I get nervous, really nervous. I’m scared I can’t find a way out. So I start running and running and I think I see some stuff but I can’t really remember what they looked like. So I run down this tunnel looking hallway and I see a grate on the floor with a rope leading into a sewer. I try and pull the grate up but it won’t budge, I try kicking it and it won’t fall. Suddenly I hear this bizarre cry that I can’t even begin to explain. Like it was a robotic voice being forced through… something. A large room maybe? It echoed all over the place. I turn around and I see this, this thing. It was some kind of abomination. Half of it was a man, his skin and face were ashy, gray as polluted snow. He was wearing some kinda suit with a tie that reached down to his knees. The other half was some weird metallic thing. Wires were hanging from its arm. The body was nothing but these thick wires, the arms and legs nothing but gray steel girders. Its hand was, like the main scoop thing from a bulldozer? Only, if the fingers split and it was more akin to a claw. The thing sees me and charges right at me. It doesn’t ‘run’ though, it’s more like it walks fast to get to me. The human side hits me and knocks me to the ground. I look up and can see its face looking right at me and I’m just laid out on the floor in pain. It takes its claw and reels it back right? And it swipes it right past my face. I don’t feel pain, but I can tell somethings wrong. I can’t breathe through my nose anymore. I move my hand and touch my face with it, it’s covered in blood and it feels like my head is burning. Its face just looks at mine, shaking faster than I can keep track off, blurring itself. Then before I knew it...I was awake.”

Lulu sat disturbed at the violent nightmare as the air got heavier the longer Davidson explained it. She considered what it would feel like to be attacked in such a manner and could feel the tickle of seizing up again. “That’s horrible Sire.”

“You’re tellin’ me. The thing about dreams and nightmares though is you get use to it. I was messed up the entire week after I had it. But, after that it just sorta rested in my mind, just another thing I think about sometimes. If you’re generating dreams like this I don’t doubt the same thing will happen to you. If you give it some time I’m sure it’ll be easier to deal with. Plus, you can always talk to me or Kry about it, which was something I didn’t have and still managed well enough.” 

Lulu lifted her hands from Davidson’s, his own body still registering the feeling. “Thank you Sire. You all really do too much for me.”

“It’s not a problem, certainly wasn’t the oddest dream I’ve had though. I once got traumatized when I was a kid because I had a dream where I fished a human sized lagoon triggerfish cause I wanted to ask him to be my friend, like in those old children’s books.”

“And, did it become your friend?” She asked, wanting to change the subject.

“No, he slapped me in the face and went back into the lake. I started to cry.” Davidson saw the subtleties of Lulu’s face. For a brief moment he swore he saw a snicker come out of her mouth. He imagined the imagery he just conjured in her head and he tried to cover his smiling mouth as well. “It’s...Pfft, it’s not f-funny. I never learned how to swim cause I always told my parents mister...hehe, mister slapper was-” Lulu tried to stifle it but couldn’t resist anymore.

“Did it make a wet sound?” She asked, Davidson let out a large wheezing sound before the pair started to laugh with one another over the bizarre imagery of a child being slapped by a large fish.

“HA HA~~~! It, it did! Like someone getting slapped with a t-tuna!” Lulu had a hand in front of her mouth as she giggled. The laughter giving her a much needed release from the events that surrounded her.

“I, heh, I’m sorry Sire, I shouldn’t be laughing at something like that but it’s just so absurd.” She said while continuing to giggle to herself.

“Nah don’t be, it is funny.” The two looked at one another in the glow of the morning sun. The mutual weight felt by the two of them seemed to lessen, just a bit.

Lulu lifted herself up from the ground and dusted her uniform. “Thank you for that Sire. I feel, a little bit better. Have you eaten yet? Is there anything I can make?”

“No actually I just got up, make the same thing as yesterday please?” He went digging into his cabinet and pulled out a pair of worn work gloves, different than the ones used to work on nandroids with. “I don’t have any retrievals scheduled for today so I’ll be doing assessments and repairs. Before that though I got some scrap work out back I wanna do before noon.” He put the gloves on and opened the front door. His eyes were blinded for a moment as the sun obscured his vision. “Just call out from the window if you need anything.”

“Okay...I will, be careful while you work Sire. Thousands of deaths and grievous injuries have occurred from preventable workplace accidents.” Davidson agreed, chuckling as he stepped out. He retrieved the model one and two robots he fried, preparing to salvage whatever he possibly could from them. Salvaging being something he was use to in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/emmy-the-robot/list?title_no=402201&page=1
> 
> https://twitter.com/DomCellini_Art
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/emmytherobot
> 
> https://www.instagram.com/dommcell/


	18. Do-Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more, with feeling.

The loud sound of a circular saw filled the neighborhood as it collided with the arm segment of the model two. The sparks were flying all over the stone patio, the gloves and welder’s mask Davidson was wearing being his only protection. Most people in the neighborhood would be doing this type of work in their garage with the swingin’ tunes of a nearby radio entertaining them. But his garage was currently filled with thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Lulu probably wouldn’t appreciate the sight either. A clean cut freed the arm from the nandroid’s torso. Davidson gave it a once over, burn marks covered it and the joint could barely move since it was partially melted. Turns out short circuiting a nandroid connected to a next generation power source can make it get a little hot inside. Into the trash pile it went with most of the circuitry, both legs, both optics, both cheeks, the torso, and the creepy tongue thing that no one likes to think about. Davidson did manage to salvage the off button and stubby nose however. He felt little from his bounty worthy of a small piece of bread.

As the saw spun against the model one retrieved from the mobster’s drug dwelling, a door flung open. Davidson could hear the exquisite sounds of belligerent complaints from behind him. It must have been his pleasant neighbor back for another conversation. He halted the saw half way through cutting the android’s leg to see the source of this disturbance. He flipped his mask up and turned around to see the irritant yelling at him again from the other side of the chain link fence that was barely the height of Davidson’s hips. He yelled at Davidson wearing the classic upset husband outfit, blue striped underwear with a wife-beater shirt and morning robe. “What the hell are you doing Randolph!? It’s too early in the morning for you to be hacking away at your dumb robots! My wife is sleeping!”

“Well it was certainly not cool to have a little hoppin’ party on a workday a couple weeks ago now was it? I seem to recall the police arriving that night and telling you all to stop it, or am I just remembering that wrong?” The man crossed his arms and seemed unimpressed at Davidson’s comeback.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander Randolph.” Davidson cracked a crooked grin and rolled his eyes at his neighbor.

“What a screwball.” Davidson whispered, flipping the mask down and ignoring the ramblings of the man behind him until he got fed up and went back inside in a huff. To say that Davidson was friends with anyone in his neighborhood was a laugh at best. To say there were hostilities was correct at worse. He hacked the machine to pieces looking for spare parts to take out. Shorting out a model one did not lead to as much damage as a model two, not as much heat is generated from their more conservative power source. But plenty of parts were still burned to pieces. This salvage work would earn him a slice of pepperoni pizza, he could nearly afford a drink to go with it. He tossed the rest of the junk into an accumulating pile in the corner of the backyard. He supposed it was time to drop it all off soon.

With the scrap work out of the way he returned inside to the pleasant aroma of an in-progress breakfast meal. Sizzling sausages and eggs were cooking in pans, the yolk broken and cooking with the rest of the eggs. Lulu was proactively moving around to complete each task in preparing the meal. Their multi-task capabilities always impressed him, that particular requirement being of utmost importance during their creation. Davidson tried to awkwardly shuffle around Lulu to reach the sink and clean his hands, it had been quite some time since he lived with another. Lulu bumped into him and quickly backed away. Davidson noticed she was worried at the mistake, seeing the faintest flinch in her face.“Ah, sorry Sire! I didn’t mean to intrude. Let me…get out of the way.” Lulu tried to give Davidson a wide berth to walk through. He just smiled and acted like nothing happened.

“Thanks for the apology, but it’s okay.” Lulu was a little puzzled at his response. Davidson never seemed to take her mistakes personally. He never threw them back at her or chastise her whenever she struggled with something. She should be happy with that, but she always felt like something was wrong when it didn’t. She got the impression that he actually was upset, but was hiding it from her because of Michael. She did, after all, know of his capacity to get upset. She started to realize there was a sickening comfort to getting exactly what you expected when compared to not knowing what every day would bring. She remembered being immersed in the unknown that night, or was she lifted into it? 

The breakfast meal was finished, topped off with orange juice and a pot of ready made coffee for him. Davidson took his seat at the table and Lulu placed the plate and cups in front of him. “Ah, one moment Sire, I believe the paper just arrived.” She saw a rolled up newspaper land in the front yard of the home. She looked around the neighborhood as she retrieved it. People were walking their dogs and children were riding two-wheeled contraptions, although some of them appeared to be rusting. She noticed someone in the house next door glaring at her through the window. His stare was menacing, he was obviously upset at something. Was it her? What did she do? The two had never said a single word to each other. Being out in the open while this person stared from the comfort of his home started to creep her out. The feeling of defenselessness speeding her along into the house.

“Sire,” she said, getting his attention as she placed the newspaper neatly onto his table. He was happily eating away at his breakfast, his look of content being a new one for Lulu to register. “When I retrieved the paper. One of your neighbors was glaring at me from their window. Did I do something wrong?”

“Was it this guy?” Davidson pointed with his thumb in the direction of the neighbor he argued with earlier. When Lulu confirmed that it was he seemed disappointed, she hoped it wasn’t with her. “Don’t mind him, or anyone else here really. There’s a reason I don’t have you get all chummy with people here. Guy’s a pr-, um, jerk.”

“You sure I didn’t do anything to make him upset?” Davidson placed a piece of egg and sausage on his toast before biting into it. The taste was exquisite and one he didn’t even realize he missed as dearly as he did. Letting himself fall into a cycle of half eaten and re-heated fast food was like a frog in a pot of water. It made him wonder what else he had managed to slip up on.

“Hmm? Naugh.” Davidson said with his mouth full, swallowing it and washing the rest away with cold orange juice. “No you didn’t, really. Guy’s a hypocrite is all. Thinks he can party then get upset when I do salvage work in the morning. Just a little neighborhood tussle is all, happens all the time.”

He took the rubber band keeping the newspaper rolled up off, Lulu cleaning off the stove top and wiping the grease off. The neighborhood she originally worked in had a high sense of community, always hosting dinners and get-togethers. Did everyone in the neighborhood not like Davidson? Was it them or him? Would they also not like her either? Lulu remembered everyone at Hawthorn being friends with her, on the rare occasions that she saw them that is.

Davidson opened the paper as he finished the meal and was about the thank Lulu for it when he his attention was pulled by the headline news he read. “Holy crap, Lulu get a load of this.” She turned around and dried her hands on the towel laying on the counter. Walking around him, she could read the headlines in bold print, “ **STERLING ROBOTICS FINALIZES PARTNERSHIP WITH JB HEALTH!** ”

“JB Health?” Lulu queried of her Sire. Not being taught about other robotics corporations or their devices was a higher up decision. The fact that they weren’t Sterling or an outmode was good enough.

“J&B actually. Jacob and Barker. They make robots for hospitals. Like those square things that drive around or the overhead ones they use for surgeries. Says here they’re gonna make a positronic powered nurse for children’s hospitals. Hm, how ‘helpful’.” Lulu picked up the used dishes from the table and placed them next to the sink.

“Children receiving top quality Sterling care during such a tumultuous time, I think that’s a brilliant idea. Especially if many of them don’t have nandroids of their own.” Davidson lowered the paper to look at Lulu with a raised eyebrow.

“Sterling care? Is that a brand now? I’m sure the public will help all the nurses who are going to have to find work when these things get released.” It was quick, but he saw it. Lulu gave Davidson a side glance and moved her gaze back to the window in front of her.

“There’s...there’s no way they can manufacture enough to replace everyone Sire. They’ll be fine.” Davidson put the paper away and eyed up Lulu before walking to retrieve his travel case. He didn’t know who answered his rebuttal, Lulu or Sterling. Neither was someone he was willing to continue the discussion with. He took his travel case and slid it open, retrieving the forest nandroid inside and placing her on top of his table and connecting her to his computer as routine as ever before. Indeed, she had no registered owner in her records and many fields were missing information. Davidson believed she was a factory new nandroid that wound up in the forest. How this occurred was something he had no way of knowing. It wasn’t long before “NOW RECORDING LOG 1 of CASE 0x168” was on his screen, microphone in hand.

“Initial assessment of nandroid case three-six-zero, log the first, beginning.” With his gloves and goggles on, he began his assessment. “Nandroid is a standard Sterling model two. The subject had to be retrieved from Green Park in the mountainous region north of the city. Nandroid had no uniform or any article of clothing apart from what appeared to be a hand made wig of leaves and grass. Shell is a standard frame with no modifications found in addition to a pair of blue opticals. Opticals are currently in a weird state, like she's missing a piece or something, they may need to be replaced. The shell has suffered damage due to, um…” He looked over to Lulu who was finishing with her clean up in the kitchen. He leaned in closer to the microphone and whispered, “Due to the subject not willing to leave the site of retrieval.” He didn’t want Lulu to hear that he was the source of some of the damage to her shell, not really knowing how she would take to learning that not every nandroid he retrieved was willing to go with him.

“The physical damage is easily fixed and is not a major cause for concern. However, the subject is suffering from PBD- uhhh. Which one was it…” He retrieved a list from a nearby drawer and opened a notebook, reading off from a list of numbers. “Ah, right, PBD-102-185. The subject’s file system has overlaid memories on top of one another causing outmode behavior. Subject spoke as though she was living in the past, present, and future. The defect itself is simple enough to fix but my main concern stems from the damage already inflicted on the memories themselves. It may be possible to untangle the overlaid memories and reform the chain but I’m not sure how the nandroid will react to its time in the forest and what effect it’s had on her personality growth. If we’re too late and it’s developed too far then the damage could have already caused, um,” the sounds of pages flipping was recorded as he tracked down another number in the list. “PBD-099-067 to occur in which case she will have to be decommissioned. The case will be put on hold for now as I am currently missing a proper reader, a replacement is due to arrive soon from Michael Kryo. Shell repairs will begin in the near future, three-six-zero will be moved to pod nine until then. Ending log.” 

Lulu had been inching closer to Davidson as he was assessing the nandroid. Waiting for him to finish before asking him, “Sire? What’s wrong with her?” She moved to the other side of the table and saw the dents and bits of broken metal. All the talk of her mental facilities had caught her attention. She was interested in her condition after she was assured it wouldn’t be shooting sparks like the last one.

“Oh um, well. When this nandroid stores her memories a defect is causing her mind to write them on top of each other. So, she’s sorta experiencing multiple memories at the same time when she accesses them.” Davidson unplugged her and started to move her into the storage pod.

“So, you can ‘fix’ her, right? Sire, I wanted to ask. What can you do for her that you can’t do for me?” He slid the pod door down and sat back down in his chair. He heard a tinge, however small, of frustration in her voice.

“Well, her issue has an identifiable source. A problem that we can fix.” Davidson turned his monitor and showed Lulu the identified problem his computer detected in her mind. “Once we fix it the problem can stop, then we just have to repair the damage and, assuming it works, she’ll go back to normal.”

“Go back to normal? I see...” Lulu wasn’t quite sure how to take that statement. Or what it meant for her. It did little to ease her worries as to what ‘normal’ would be for her. 

“I’m sure you’ve managed to piece it together, you’re an outmode Lulu. But not like the others, you’re one that has occurred naturally. The ‘nautral’ part of naturally occurring outmode is that...Well, it started as a theory that me and Kry had after you guys were released to the public. Your mind is adaptive, it learns and changes to best handle it’s surroundings. It’s the reason people believe the nandroid is almost like part of the family. It’s also one of the reasons why second hand nandroids aren’t as expensive or efficient, since they can't integrate as well. So me and Kry had a theory. Is it possible, if the mind experiences the right combination of events and emotions while living with their families, for the adaptive processes to allow a nandroid to disobey its own laws? To become an outmode not based on time or defects, but as a state of evolution? Well, the papers would love to hear about that.” Lulu felt a great weight hung from her neck at the mention of the title, outmode. When she heard that word for the first time in a room with other nandroids she considered the line between her and them was so thoroughly defined. She believed that term could never apply to her, that an outmode couldn’t be with normal people. “Of course, one thing that would help us out immensely is if we knew what events occurred that could have potentially caused this…”

Lulu practically slammed her hands onto the desk. She screamed, “NO!” as her body practically leapt to interrupt Davidson from suggesting something she would rather not go through. “S-Sire I’m sorry, but no. I don’t want you to know, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t ever want to think about it again. I can’t…” She rushed up to Davidson and grabbed his hands, she was desperate for him not to know. “Sire please promise me you’ll never look into what happened.”

“Lulu, are you sure? It could really help us work with you...help us understand.” Lulu’s look begged him not too. She wanted to bury it as far down as she could. She wanted it to just be a bad dream. “Sure. I won’t-”

“ **Promise** me Sire.” Davidson’s best shot at helping her just went up in flames. For him to not even know what happened to her potentially dashed away Michael's end goal for helping her. However, he couldn’t betray whatever trust she had given him again after nearly losing it from his temper. The act did show she was willing to trust him at all though. He could consider that a fair trade if he wanted to.

“I **promise** not to look into what happened to you, by any means. But if you ever want to talk about it, we’ll be here.” The gesture seemed to have had an effect, Lulu taking an artificial breath of relief and loosening her grip on him.

“Thank you Sire...thank you.” The exchange made Davidson uneasy, unsure of what to do. He opened a file on his computer as she walked away from him. Making a note to mention this to Michael during his next report. He tried to think, if he couldn't know anything, how could he possibly help her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cobbled is based in Dominic Cellini's "Emmy the Robot" series.
> 
> Please support the original artist.
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